Before they cleared out their desks, many of the city’s 56
employees who received layoff notices warned that some of their
colleagues who kept their jobs would jump ship due to increased
workloads, unclear management and a fear of future cut-backs.
Before they cleared out their desks, many of the city’s 56 employees who received layoff notices warned that some of their colleagues who kept their jobs would jump ship due to increased workloads, unclear management and a fear of future cut-backs.
These stresses factored into Community Development Director Wendie Rooney’s decision to resign Mar. 6 and take a job with the same title at Los Gatos, but she said she began looking for another position before layoff rumors started circulating City Hall. For a woman whose passion is planning, Rooney said overseeing Gilroy’s building, engineering, planning code enforcement and housing departments – which earned her $172,373 last fiscal year, not including benefits – has been overwhelming. With 16 fewer employees – about half her staff – Rooney said it the situation has worsened, but in Los Gatos, she will work as a director who focuses more on planning because the departments are organized differently, she said.
“As I’ve moved on here in Gilroy, my responsibilities have grown much larger, and I haven’t been able to focus on planning, which is my true passion,” Rooney said, adding that she wants to concentrate on planning during the next five to seven years she expects to work before retiring.
“In this kind of environment, it’s very difficult to be successful as a community development director. It’s hard to try and meet expectations,” she said.
When Rooney came to Gilroy in November 2002 after a three-year stint as a planning director in Steamboat, Colo., she cited similar reasons, according to the Steamboat Pilot & Today, a newspaper there.
In an October 2002 article, Rooney was quoted as saying, “In Steamboat, it was somewhat difficult and hard to really please people here … It is just a very challenging environment and I feel that I would be possibly more effective in an environment focused on how to help the community grow right, and how to grow smart.”
In Colorado, the California native worked under her previous name, Wendie Schulenburg, and she left Steamboat with a slightly bitter taste in her mouth after an angry resident there sued her, dozens of colleagues and city council members for allegedly violating the resident’s rights with regard to zoning decisions. Rooney laughed off the cases as frivolous, and federal court records show that multiple judges dismissed the cases filed by the plaintiff, Kay Sieverding, who claimed the Steamboat City Council’s former president was improperly building on his property.
All that and her old surname from her former husband are long behind Rooney, though, and she won’t be leaving any petty legal troubles behind her this time. Instead, she said she’ll remember her time here fondly. Among her accomplishments here, Rooney cited overseeing the greatest number of capital projects and private development applications the city has ever processed, but training and developing an “excellent staff” to manage the unprecedented workload was her main success, she said.
“The development of our staff was probably my greatest reward,” Rooney said.
With half of them gone, though, Rooney’s crowning accomplishment from the golden days of development has faded. Now it’s time to seek greener pastures, she said.
As for the vacuum she will leave behind, City Administrator Tom Haglund wrote in an e-mail to the council Thursday evening that he is making “the necessary arrangements” to bring in an outside interim planning manager.
“(I) am working on the details of that effort now to ensure a smooth transition and to ensure that the planning activities we are working on will continue on their path for our customers,” Haglund wrote.
