Final piece of city reorganization in place
Council approves Community Services Department
NORWALK — The last piece of Mayor Harry Rilling’s city reorganization plan got its approval from Common Council this week.
The council approved the creation of a Community Services Department, which includes two new positions — chief of community services and a human services director.
The goal of the newly created department is to link up citizens with existing resources, whether they’re offered through the city, state, nonprofit or other entity, as well as find gaps in the system and work to address them.
“This is truly a public facing item,” Councilman Nicholas Sacchinelli, an at-large Democrat, said. “We’re going to be aligning services that we already have and we’re going to offer navigation through the somewhat muddy waters of what is a municipal responsibility, what is a state responsibility and at times what is a 501(c) 3 responsibility.”
The council also allocated $140,000, of which about $105,000 will go toward the human services director position, over $19,000 will go toward making the chief’s salary $140,000, which was previously budgeted at just over $120,000 and the remainder will fund raises for existing positions.
The additional costs are the main reason Councilman Doug Hempstead, District D Republican, said he would not support the measures.
“These functions, I thought they could be absorbed within the existing positions,” he said. “I think it was proposed that the reorganization plan was basically supposed to be a ‘sum neutral’ as far as savings go and this is an additional expense.”
Other council members said they viewed it as an investment for important services in the city.
“One of the first things that happened to me when I joined the council a few years ago was people asking, ‘where do I go if I have a question regarding social services’ and there never really has been a place,” Council President Tom Livingston said. “A city of our size really needs a resource for citizens and I think this is long overdue.”
The chief of community services position will “act as a liaison to state and federal agencies dealing with the areas addressed in the position description.”
The chief will oversee areas including the health department, human services, human relations and fair rent, youth services and the library.
The human services director position is responsible for planning, organizing and supervising city services for children, youths, families seniors and other residents in need.
“This is something that I think has been needed in Norwalk for a long time,” Rilling said at the council meeting on Tuesday. “It’s a coordinated effort now to be able to have a single area resource for people. I know sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there are many people in the city of Norwalk who need services.”
The chief of community services was the last piece in Rilling’s reorganization, which aimed to streamline city services and provide efficiencies by putting similar departments together under a chief ’s position. The mayor now has nine direct reports which include chief of staff, corporation counsel, chief of community and economic development, chief financial officer, chief of police, fire chief, chief of operations and public works, chief of human resources and personnel and chief of community services.