Remember Brian Jackson?
Yep, he was the city’s head planner until he retired in November 2015.
Guess who replaced him?
So far… nobody.
But as city manager Sadhu Johnston told me last week, the city is getting closer to hiring a new planner and a general manager to oversee the planning department. Interviews will begin this month and Johnston said he knows some of the candidates.
He wouldn’t drop names but said the search firm has a long list of contenders for both jobs.
“They are talking to people near and far for both positions and we’re getting a lot of interest from great candidates,” said Johnston, who was recently appointed city manager after assuming an acting role when Penny Ballem was dumped last September. “I’m really excited about that.”
So what’s he looking for in a new planning boss?
A lot.
Here’s a taste:
“We really need a community builder and a visionary communicator, and someone that has experience in dealing with conflict. I’ve talked to potential candidates that have asked questions and I’m trying to be clear that this is not going to be an easy job — that we are at a very unique point in our evolution as a city.”
That evolution — and the ongoing unrest to go with it — is not like the mid-1980s, said Johnston, referring to the days when highrises popping up downtown didn’t get the pushback from residents that council has felt in recent years.
“After so many years of growth, it’s not an easy discussion for communities. People have seen their city changing below their feet and, in that context, not a lot of support for affordable housing and child care and many of the things our residents are struggling with. It’s not an easy time to be doing this planning work and enabling developments.”
It will also be essential the new planner works well with Mayor Gregor Robertson and councillors, who will get the final sign-off on who gets the job. Johnston acknowledged the importance of the bureaucrat-politician relationship and said anyone in a senior bureaucrat position needs to “be ready to take direction and implement it.”
But what if that person’s politics doesn’t align with the political party running the show at city hall?
Johnston doesn’t see it as an issue, noting that despite different parties in power at city hall over the decades, the policy direction of the city has been “very aligned.” He pointed to various administrations’ push for complete, compact communities, an emphasis on improving transit, reducing reliance on the car, cycling, walking and constructing “green buildings.”
“A lot of those things are not Vision, they’re not NPA, they’re — from what I can tell — really the beliefs of our community and what residents expect here. They may not all agree on the form of it but generally that seems to be the direction that the residents have been going. I would expect us to get a planning director that had similar philosophical approaches. We’re not going to be getting somebody that believes in a car-oriented city, for instance, or doesn’t believe in compact, walkable transit-oriented neighbourhoods.”
While the planner will get the media attention, the new general manager of planning services will have less of a profile but an equally important role in running the planning department. Johnston, who will be responsible for hiring the manager, said the decision to hire two people instead of one was made clear to him after meeting in January with former city planners.
“For me, that was probably the turning point — meeting them and getting that kind of clarity,” he said. “Having one person that would really excel in managing the day-to-day permit operations and development services — on top of doing really cutting edge community-involved planning work — is not, in my opinion, really reasonable.”
Both positions are expected to be filled by May.
mhowell@vancourier.com
@Howellings
