SAN CLEMENTE : City Seeks Ways to Ease Space Crunch

Space at City Hall is so limited that people take tests for city jobs in a room that doubles as a storage space. Those recalled for interviews are sometimes interrupted or distracted because they meet with staff in the Mayor’s Conference Room, a high-traffic area adjacent to the City Council chambers.

To ease the space crunch and consolidate city functions, such as processing building permit applications, the city is considering two options.

One is to move the administrative offices of the Fire and Public Works departments to the Rancho San Clemente Corporate Center, where the city’s Community Development Department is now located.

Another option is to move portable offices into the parking lot outside City Hall.

City Manager Michael W. Parness took the first proposal to the council last week but withdrew it, requesting more time to seek answers to one of the city’s biggest dilemmas. “That’s what we’re struggling with--how to solve our space problems when we don’t have very much money.”

Under the first proposal, 13 Fire Department employees would move to the Rancho San Clemente Corporate Center at a cost of $97,100. The city’s Personnel and Finance departments would then move into the space vacated by the Fire Department.

The city clerk would move into the space freed by the personnel employees, while the city treasurer would move into space formerly occupied by the economic development office, which moved to the Corporate Center site.

The proposal also calls for moving the administration and staff of the newly created Public Works Department to the Corporate Center.

City officials formed the new department by combining the maintenance and recycling divisions from the former Public Services Department and the utilities and engineering divisions from the Community Development Department.

Parness said the proposal would allow the city to consolidate offices that are involved in the permitting process, an area that received low marks on a recent reorganization report.

The city government is now spread between the Community Center, where the Beaches, Parks and Recreation Department has offices; City Hall, the waste-water maintenance facility on Avenida Pico and the Rancho San Clemente Corporate Center.

“One of the problems we have is communication because we’re located in four different facilities throughout the city,” Parness said. “Another is access to the public--being in four different locations is obviously a problem.”