Irvine : Council Will Consider Creating 7 Jobs, Hiring 18 New Workers

The City Council will decide Tuesday whether to create seven new city jobs and will consider a request to hire an additional 18 municipal employees. Walter Kreutzen, director of administrative services, said development is progressing so rapidly in Irvine that planners and other city employees are having a tough time keeping up with the administrative work.

“We do a lot of development in this town,” he said, stressing that the new positions would help to eliminate the four- to six-month wait developers endure when seeking city approval of virtually everything from site maps to traffic studies.

Part of the solution to that problem would be the creation of four new grades of transportation planners and three new grades of transportation engineers, he said. The pay scales would range from $1,852 a month for a junior transportation planner to $2,653 for an associate traffic engineer.

In addition, the council will vote to fill 18 new openings, including 10 for the Community Development Department, six for Public Works and two for Administrative Services. The total yearly salaries of the proposed 18 new hires, according to Kreutzen, would be about $672,000, all of which would be paid out of fees collected by the city.

If the City Council gives its nod to the plan, Kreutzen said, hiring could begin as soon as June. “We’ll be cutting the corners and burning the midnight oil if the council approves this,” he said.