Frick’s resignation elicits some mixed reactions
CITY HALL — The head of Santa Monica’s oft-criticized planning department announced Monday she will step down from her post to take the same position in Long Beach, a city that spans 50 square miles and has nearly a half-million residents.
Suzanne Frick was hired in 1983 to be an assistant planner for City Hall. She worked her way up the ladder to take the department’s top job 11 years ago.
“What I’ve learned is that we continuously need to be evaluating our systems for improvement,” said Frick, who owns a craftsman-style house in Venice that she shares with her partner and their two dogs. “What happens in many cases is we get comfortable in the way we do things and we don’t take a critical look at how to improve things.”
City Hall’s planning department has been under fire in recent years from many developers, merchants and residents for being overly bureaucratic and unresponsive. Frick acknowledged she sometimes felt like a scapegoat, but added “that’s the nature of the work.”
Frick, who said she was not job hunting when she was approached by headhunters for the Long Beach job, declined to say how much she will earn at her new position. She made nearly $140,000 a year as a veteran employee at City Hall, city records show.
Asked what advice she would pass on to her successor, Frick, who was born and raised in Riverside and majored in fine art at the University of California at Santa Barbara, replied, “I would tell them to communicate and talk with the community, to really hear what they want and rely on the excellent and talented staff in the department.”
No replacement had been named.
City Manager Susan McCarthy issued a statement Monday saying plans for soliciting applicants would be released soon.
“Suzanne’s institutional memory and dedication are a loss for Santa Monica,” McCarthy said.
Critics of the planning department said they were excited by Frick’s pending departure because it brought with it an opportunity to affect broad change. The planning department was subjected to an independent audit last year that verified complaints directed at Santa Monica City Hall for being more difficult to navigate than those in neighboring cities.
“I think it’s good all the way around,” said City Councilman Herb Katz, an architect who regularly uses City Hall. “There’s a certain amount of time when you move on.”
Katz, who gave Frick a positive referral, said the problem with the planning department at City Hall, which also oversees the building and safety division, is that it hasn’t adapted to changes in the city. Katz credited the problems to micro-managing by the City Council, poorly written ordinances and misinterpretations by planning staff and the city attorney.
“Our department must have an attitude of ‘Help,’ not ‘Hinder,’” he said. “We can’t say, ‘We didn’t mention it in our zoning or planning documents, so you can’t do it.’ We need to say, ‘We didn’t mention it, so how can we help you and work with you and make it happen.’
“I think it (Frick’s departure) gives us an opportunity to look freshly, really freshly,” Katz added. “I think it’s time to do some reorganization in building and safety, and planning.”
Frick said she looked forward to tackling many of the same issues in Long Beach that face Santa Monica, but on a bigger scale. Long Beach is the fifth-largest city in California and 32nd-largest in the United States. Like Santa Monica, it is in the process of updating its land use and circulation elements, which govern development and transportation.
The last 21 years have exposed Frick to a wide range of planning issues and projects, including the daunting challenge of rebuilding following the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Still, Frick, who was scheduled to start her new position on April 18, said no single project stands out.
“The difficulty I have is that I don’t think there’s any one thing I can point to,” she said. “It’s every day of being fired up. It’s the passion of the job.”
“The difficulty I have is that I don’t think there’s any one thing I can point to. It’s every day of being fired up. It’s the passion of the job.” — SUZANNE FRICK Planning director
Among Frick’s favorite projects were working on a planned Civic Center for downtown, and working on open space and zoning ordinances, she said. Asked to name the hardest single part of her job, Frick said, “I think it’s balancing all of the competing objectives to come up with projects or policies that work for the city. That’s what I do every day. It’s talking with the council, the Planning Commission, the community and ultimately coming up with regulations the City Council can approve.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 15, 2005. Read the original PDF.