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McMinnville proposes cuts to code compliance, reduces general‑fund share of special projects manager; staff flags delays to development review
Summary
Community Development staff proposed removing one code‑compliance FTE and reducing the general‑fund share of a special projects manager; staff said those changes would limit complaint response, volunteer programs and delay development review.
Heather Richards, Community Development Director, told the Budget Committee the department proposed several general‑fund reductions that would reduce enforcement and slow planning and engineering review.
Richards said the code compliance program — historically two FTE funded from the general fund — was proposed to be reduced by one FTE, producing a budget savings of about $131,000 and an additional roughly $19,000 in supportive services reductions. "The impact of that will be obviously, there'll be a limited response to complaints," she said, adding that the city would have to triage complaints and could not maintain volunteer programs for graffiti removal and other community assistance previously coordinated by code compliance staff.
The staff recommendation also included removing the general‑fund portion (25 percent) of the special projects manager position tied to legislative advocacy and removing contracts for state and federal lobbyists; Richards said the city had secured roughly $3,000,000 in direct allocations in recent years when legislative advocacy was funded but cautioned that such receipts are not guaranteed in the future.
Other proposed changes included shifting a quarter of an associate housing planner position fully into the affordable housing fund (saving about $52,000) and a $100,000 reduction in engineering supportive services; staff said those moves would result in longer development‑review times and increased workload for remaining staff. Richards warned, "We don't have the ability to control the amount of development review that comes in, so we can't ratchet down the workload to the reduced staffing, but we will work on efficiencies to be able to respond to that."
Staff also summarized related capital and ARPA items for later discussion; committee members asked staff to provide a clearer accounting of unallocated ARPA balances and committed projects in follow-up materials.
