Irvine : Council OKs Request to Add 18 to City Staff

In a move that officials hope will relieve some of the city’s growing pains, the City Council unanimously approved a request by the city management to hire an additional 18 municipal employees and to create seven new development-related jobs.

The five-member council voted Tuesday to add 10 employees to the Community Development Department, 6 engineering and support employees to the Public Works and Transportation Services departments and an administrative assistant and an account clerk to the Administrative Services Department.

The new workers’ combined yearly salaries, to be paid with fees collected by the city, will total more than $600,000.

Larry Hogle, director of community development, told the council that Irvine’s rapid growth has outpaced the ability of city planners and other employees to keep up with backlogs and waiting lists for routine planning approvals.

The vote also authorizes the city to create four new grades of transportation planners and three new grades of transportation engineers. Their pay scales will range from $22,224 a year for a junior transportation planner to $31,836 a year for an associate traffic engineer.

Before the vote, Councilman Larry Agran, who called the addition of 18 workers “a substantial augmentation of our personnel,” questioned whether they could be retained in the event of a recession.

Hogle responded that development is expected to remain constant or increase over the next two years. In the event of a downturn, he said, “natural attrition” and diversion of certain duties from outside consultants to city employees would probably eliminate the need for layoffs.