WILDOMAR: Almost ready for Day 1
Interim city manager has assembled staff for fledgling city
By AARON CLAVERIE - Staff Writer | ∞
WILDOMAR ---- Most of the big puzzle pieces are in place.
Wildomar, which incorporates as a city on July 1, has a human resources director and a finance director. The city will have liability insurance on Day 1.
Planning and public works will be handled by a one-stop-shopping consulting group, a firm that employs engineers, inspectors and architects.
Negotiations are being finalized on office space that will serve as the soon-to-be city's City Hall.
These pieces have slid together in the last few weeks during the City Council-elect's regular Wednesday evening meetings.
The five-member council-elect was selected from a field of 14 candidates in the February election, which also saw area residents vote to approve incorporation and approve dividing the city into five districts for future council elections.
At its most recent meeting, the council-elect selected a Sacramento-based joint powers authority to provide insurance coverage. During a meeting late last month, the council-elect offered contracts to Steve Stark, Pasadena's former finance director, and Terry Fitzwater, a human resources consultant who will work with the interim city manager, John Danielson, on staffing the fledgling city.
"I'm very, very pleased with what we've done so far. We're way ahead of where most pre-incorporation folks would be. Knock on wood," Danielson said last week.
Stark will be paid $125 per hour to establish financial systems for the city, according to a copy of the contract provided by Wildomar's interim city attorney.
Fitzwater will be paid $20,000 upfront, when funding becomes available, and he will be reimbursed for travel expenses and provided $75 per diem.
Both Stark and Fitzwater have worked with Danielson, a former city manager of Elk Grove, in the past. Fitzwater, whom Danielson calls a "jack of all trades," was Danielson's assistant city manager in Elk Grove and Stark was a finance official in Santa Clarita when Danielson worked there in the mid-1990s.
In the next two weeks, Danielson said he will work with these new staff members to scratch off the remaining items on his civic to-do list: finding a city clerk, opening up bank accounts, preparing a budget and finalizing the city hall lease.
"The next two weeks are going to be very busy weeks," he said.
Stark will be charged with crunching the numbers of the comprehensive fiscal analysis that was prepared for the county agency that approved putting the incorporation question before area voters.
That analysis, last revised in August, is a sort of budget template that lists expected revenues and anticipated expenses. Because the economy has changed since August, Danielson said Stark will be taking the assumptions in the analysis and updating them as needed.
The new assumptions, which will detail how much money the city of Wildomar can expect to receive from property tax and sales tax receipts, will be used to craft a budget for the city's first year in operation.
While some finance departments in neighboring cities have been working on their budgets for the 2008-09 fiscal year since January or earlier, Danielson said Stark is going to put together a streamlined document that will be presented to the council on July 1.
Some Wildomar residents have said they are concerned about the ability of the soon-to-be city to pay its bills and balance its budget in light of rising costs and slumping revenue sources. Some residents also have said the city's staff members are basically a Southern California version of Danielson's staff in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento.
The chairman of the council-elect, Bob Cashman, and Danielson, addressed both of those concerns last week.
Talking about the close-knit nature of his staff, Danielson said he purposely recommended to the council individuals with whom he is familiar because they have shown they know how to do the work needed when a city is formed.
"At this point, I can't afford someone who is not going to work out," he said. "There is so little room for error to meet (the) council's goals. And they are ambitious goals."
Cashman said the council-elect is happy that Danielson has been working to fill in the staffing gaps, a job complicated by Wildomar not having any money to work with.
"It's really more complicated to put such a thing together," he said.
Cashman said Danielson has called upon some people he's dealt with before, a group that didn't have ties to Wildomar.
But Cashman said the new staff is developing those ties.
"Everybody that comes in is escorted around the community. We tell them how it is and we talk to them about (Wildomar). And they are pleasantly surprised," he said.
Contact staff writer Aaron Claverie at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2624, or aclaverie@californian.com.
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WildomarWatcher wrote on Jun 17, 2008 8:59 AM:Oh yes, “Most of the big puzzle pieces are in place.” If you don’t look closely enough to see that square pegs have been pounded roughly into round holes. What the council-elect has done is allow Danielson a free hand to hire staff, expensive staff, to cobble together a cookie cutter set of city policies, procedures, processes, systems and resolutions, with little or no relationship to Wildomar’s real, long-term needs.
We now have City staff which will work remotely from Wildomar most of the time, at added cost to the taxpayers, and whose established loyalties are to John Danielson, not the community of Wildomar.
We have a City Attorney who is instructing the council-elect on how to circumvent the intent of the Brown Act with regard to council meeting notices and publishing written agenda; a Finance Director who is going to cobble together a “streamlined” budget and staff who is recommending equipment purchases without detailed specifications or competitive bids. And, a council-elect who is rubber stamping approvals right and left, in many cases without public discussion, simply to get everything in place by July 1st.
All this brings new meaning to the old adage about doing things in haste, and repenting in leisure. Wildomar is going to pay dearly for these expediencies, and be left with a set of operational polices that are designed to work with this package of absentee players.
Incorporation is scheduled for July 1st. Wildomar residents should celebrate that with it comes obligations for the council to make complete disclosure of adjusted revenue estimates and budgets, and the full costs for all their approved expenditures…along with adherence to the Brown Act. I expect we won’t get these things without demanding them in loud, clear voices.
Wildomar original wrote on Jun 17, 2008 1:27 PM:Thank you Wildomar Watcher -
Very well said.
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