Neighborhood Services To Get Full-Time Coordinator

The city’s Civil Service Department is looking to fill a new employee position in the Department of Neighborhood Services.

The public information coordinator position, approved as full time, was recently added to Neighborhood Services.

Last week, the City Council approved using funds from the general budget to cover the $29,628 annual salary the position will pay.

A public information coordinator is needed because Neighborhood Services has been operating since May with one full-time staffer and one part-time staffer.

“We’re moving to get the program back on track,” said City Manager Hank Miggins.

The Neighborhood Services Department oversees Spokane’s 26 neighborhood councils, which helped develop the city’s street tree ordinance and a proposed new comprehensive plan. The councils also helped find a new location for the city’s operations complex and launched a Community Emergency Response Training Program in Spokane.

The councils also are active in helping to find a strategy to repair the city’s streets.

Representatives from neighborhood councils meet as a community assembly that acts as an advisory board to the City Council.

Since the program began with only three neighborhood councils five years ago, Neighborhood Services had three full-time employees and one part-time staffer.

Neighborhood Services lost two key employees in the spring when former department head Molly Myers retired, followed two weeks later by the resignation of projects director Janet Davis.

Myers cited burnout as her reason for retiring.

Davis resigned after working for 3 years without benefits as a project employee, which means her job could have been terminated at any time.

Davis tried to get permanent status at her job by requesting a new civil service classification in December.

The request was denied on the grounds that Davis’ job could fit into the public information coordinator position.

Davis would have had to apply for that job but she opted not to because she said it didn’t fully utilize her talents.

Myers and Davis worked in tandem, acting as liaisons between Community Assembly and city staff.

They also helped neighborhood councils run meetings, organize agendas, find resources and build membership.

Al French, Nevada-Lidgerwood neighborhood council chairman and co-chairman of the Community Assembly, said the public information coordinator position is one of compromise.

“It doesn’t do everything we want it to do but it does more than we have now,” French said.

French said grant-writing expertise is one of the skills missing in the job description for public information coordinator.

The essential requirements of the job, as advertised by Civil Services, include providing public information resources, distributing information, coordinating functions of community involvement such as speakers, meetings and workshops, recruiting, and managing tour programs.

In the long term, Miggins said Neighborhood Services will be reassessed before a permanent director will be hired.

In the interim, the position of director is being held by Community Development Director Mike Adolfae.

“We’re trying to get the service levels back to what they were,” Adolfae said.