I have been speculating for awhile who will take over as the new planning director. Last week I proposed Jeff Schmidt. (FYI, City Hall readers, I threw that out as a curve ball, hope you got some good laughs out of it).
I have noticed there have been quite a few terminations and ‘retirements’ over the past couple of months. Someone in the Attorney’s office recently got the boot from the man in the corner office (I’m still gathering more info on that one).
I think with all this reorganization (which is to be expected in a new administration) that the Planning Department will see some major changes.
I don’t think they are going to hire a new director from a promised ‘national search’. It would be almost impossible to bring in a new director from outside of Sioux Falls or the State, even with a stellar resume, they would lack historical knowledge of planning in SF and would have to do mountains of research on day one.
So what do I think will happen? This of course is pure speculation and NOT based on any information I received, but I think they will appoint a Deputy Planning director internally and COS Beck will be the overseer of the Department, essentially getting her cake and eating it to. I think with the high salary Beck is receiving and the enormous amount of power I heard TenHaken gave her to make decisions in his absence (which is quite a bit) that she will start putting a lot of these departments under her authority.
Would love to see those Executive Orders.
Like I said, pure speculation at this point, but the stars seem to be aligning.