Planning director looks to right the ship
By MICHAEL J. TITTINGER Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY HALL — Yes, Virginia, the city has a new planning director.
More than a year after their director of planning and community development stepped down, city officials announced on Friday that they have hired a replacement in Eileen Fogarty, who is due to leave a comparable post in Alexandria, Va., in mid-September and take over in Santa Monica.
The vacancy, created when Suzanne Frick resigned in March 2005 to accept a similar position in Long Beach, has been a sore spot among many city officials eager to move forward with the city’s general plan — setting guidelines for con-trolling city development over the decades to come. As a result, City Manager Lamont Ewell made hiring a planning director his top personnel priority when he took over his post in January.
For Fogarty, the Santa Monica position represents a return to California, after having served as planning director in Santa Cruz from September 1996 until accepting the Alexandria position in November 2000. With the Santa Monica post marking her third plan-ning position in 10 years, Fogarty insisted on Friday that she comes to the city with intent of remaining for the long haul.
“Every place that I’ve been, I’ve stayed for quite a while,” said Fogarty, who also served as planning director in Annapolis, Md., amid her 23 years of experience. “Santa Monica has such great opportunities, and great challenges — to bring people together for planning decisions.
The Mills Group, an Orange County-based search firm, was hired by City Hall in March to conduct a national search for the city’s next planning director. Fogarty has a reputation as an agency “turn-around specialist” with a proven track record in community outreach, conflict resolution and building consensus.
“The opportunity is where there is such a high quality of life and people value every building that goes up.”
Fogarty takes over a much-maligned department in city affairs, under fire in recent years from many developers, merchants and residents for being overly bureaucratic, uncommonly slow, burdensome and costly. Her predecessor, Frick, acknowledged she often felt like a scapegoat.
In 2004, city officials spent $75,000 to hire a private consultant to try and figure out how to fix their planning department, after an in-house effort to shorten waits and improve service had been launched.
Residents and merchants have long complained that business is negatively impacted and residents suffer extensive delays on minor projects as a result of department inefficiency.
Fogarty said on Friday that she and Ewell had talked at length about how to go about fixing what ails the department.
“For one, I have to get out in the community and hear different perspectives on such things as development and environment,” said Fogarty, who said Sept. 25 will be her first official day on the job. “Second, from within the department, we need to talk to staff and find out what the issues are where we feel we can’t operate in a way we’d like to.”
Fogarty likened Santa Monica to her previous position in Alexandria, in that both cities have an active business district and thriving tourist industry within a very confined municipality space.
An active citizenry is another parallel. “Alexandria also has very active development pressures, in that the challenges there are also to make sure that development taking place fits into a broader concept, and the expectations of community,” said Fogarty, who said that it’s important not to come into a new place with a fixed philosophy for development.
“When going into a community, my job is to go in and listen, then start figuring out common themes of agreement and how to put together a blueprint people can live with and support. That’s my job,” said Fogarty. “It’s all about a process of making people feel we made decisions in a way that’s fair, open and that they’ve been heard.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 15, 2006. Read the original PDF.