SOUTH GATE : For Hire: City Staff Seek Outside Work

In an effort to offset the costs of complying with state and federal regulations, South Gate officials plan to contract out city staff members’ time to other municipalities.

The City Council approved a resolution last month allowing the city to contract out its planning services to other cities. Fees and the number of employees assigned to each contract will be set on a case-by-case basis, said Andy Pasmant, South Gate community development director. Pasmant oversees the city’s planning division.

South Gate planners will offer consulting on air quality management, traffic congestion management, landscape and water ordinance compliance, and affordable housing and housing stock issues.

Because the state does not reimburse municipalities for complying with its mandates, cities must charge fees to recover these costs, said Todd Argow, South Gate city manager. South Gate will be able to keep these fees lower by farming out its staff, he added.

“It’s a win-win situation for the other jurisdiction and for us. They are getting the service for far less than it would cost to do it themselves,” Argow said.

Under the council’s resolution, planners would do contracting work in-house at South Gate City Hall. The resolution allows for planning services to be contracted out immediately, with an option of adding other services such as code enforcement and police.

Although city planners are currently “very busy,” officials said additional work would not distract them from planning activities for South Gate.

“We’re not going to take on the world. We’ll weigh the amount of work we have from day to day. This is really a test case to see how much additional work is feasible,” Pasmant said.

Administrators plan to “aggressively market” the service primarily by word of mouth, Argow said.

The South Gate program joins a wave of privatization efforts by cities across the country as administrators attempt to cope with increasing service costs without raising taxes, said Bill Keith, director of research for the American Planning Assn. in Chicago.

Keith said he is unaware of other cities that are farming out staff members as a means of keeping their general funds out of the red.