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County planners cut hours Resignations leave staff short, add to backlog of work By KELLY STEWART A string of resignations has left the county planning department so shorthanded it will cut the hours it's open to the public. Beginning Monday, the department will be closed from 8 a.m. to noon Mondays and Wednesdays. The closures will last at least a month. Just three planners are staffing the department while applicants are being screened to fill seven vacancies. The department had been short two planners since May, and five more have resigned since then, said County Administrator Burke Raymond. He said heavy workload is the main reason the planners left their positions. Five accepted other jobs; none was terminated. "They left for other positions and other parts of their life," Raymond said. The department often has been embattled in recent years during a period of rapid growth and county budget cuts. In 1993, with a backlog of 350 pending land-use applications hanging over their heads, planners postponed a decision on the Eagle Point Golf Course because the department didn't catch a procedural error. "I've got staff here all very close to a nervous breakdown just trying to keep up," former planning supervisor Laurel Prairie-Kuntz said at the time. Prairie-Kuntz became the department's director and in 1996 laid off two staffers during county budget cuts. In January 1998, the department failed to meet a deadline for scheduling a public hearing on a proposed RV campground on Blackwell Road, angering neighbors opposed to the project. Prairie-Kuntz said then that the department had been dogged by high staff turnover. Of the eight planners employed then, five had been on the job less than nine months. With its current staffing problem, the department needs to emphasize work on pending applications to keep up with demand, Raymond said. About 300 applications are now pending, Raymond said. The department receives 65 to 70 new applications each month. Raymond is looking forward to building the department back up to 10 or 11 planners. "We're in a crunch right now," Raymond said. "It isn't helpful." The county also plans to hire a planning firm on contract to handle applications as needed, a move to ensure the planning process doesn't bog down, Raymond said. Such a move isn't unique. Other cities and counties in Oregon have hired planning firms to help ease workloads, Raymond said. Also, planning hearings will be held five times weekly to relieve some of the backlog in planning proposals. Until now, planning hearings have been held twice monthly. People with planning business should visit the planning counter Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings or weekday afternoons. Employees at the county's building and sanitation counters in the same office will keep regular hours and continue to issue permits. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA