Development Services Review. Final Report. Zucker July 2016

VI.

ENGINEERING DIVISION/PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT

A.

P ROFILE

Overview The Public Works Department is responsible for a wide variety of services that, in general terms, support the critical infrastructure of the City of Morgan Hill. For purposes of this report, our focus is on those operations within the Public Works Department that provide direct support to the private development review process. Under the direction of the Public Works Director/City Engineer, the Land Development Engineering section reviews and approves plans in conjunction with proposed improvements to private property. During the economic recession the Department downsized by eliminating the Deputy Director position, an Engineering Aid position, and a Public Works Inspector position. The responsibilities for various projects and tasks were shifted to the remaining staff. Two examples of this are: 1) the loss/dilution of management oversight without the Deputy Director position, and 2) the Engineers that had been assigned exclusively to review development projects were also assigned to review and manage Capital Improvement Projects (CIP). With the recovery of the economy, which has produced a dramatic increase in new construction activity, the Land Development Engineering Team is no longer capable of performing both the increased new development reviews and the previously assigned CIP projects. We feel the Engineering section needs to augment their staffing resources by adding both full-time and contract staffing. The building and planning functions have been built back up after the recession buy engineering has not. The information we received from confidential customer surveys and comments provided during our on-site focus group meetings with local developers indicated there is a strong level of dissatisfaction with the level and type of services being provided by this group. The two most frequently cited complaints were the lack of timely reviews and the tendency of staff not to perform complete plan reviews early in the process, which ultimately lead to major corrections being required late in the process. Many customers believe these problems stem from the Senior Engineer’s practice of reviewing all work produced by the two Engineers in the group before it can be released to the customer. Despite this high level of review, staff and customers report there are still frequent occurrences of significant problems not being identified until the work has begun in the field.

Morgan Hill, California

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Zucker Systems