Community Development seeks environmental program support specialist to back one coordinator

Community Development staff asked the Board of Supervisors to fund an environmental program support specialist to assist the county's environmental program coordinator, citing an unsustainable workload for a single coordinator.

Charles Harrison, presenting on behalf of Community Development, said the coordinator (referred to in the packet as Angela Bond) handles local stormwater program oversight, plan reviews, inspections, enforcement actions and required reporting to state and federal agencies including the Chesapeake Bay programs. "Currently we only have one single person conducting this at this time," Harrison said, and added the department can sustain operations only with significant help from inspectors and other staff.

Harrison proposed both full-time and part-time options and said the part-time fallback would be approximately 20 or more hours per week if a full-time hire is not approved. He noted the county is not an MS4 community but must still report land disturbance over one acre and defer to state enforcement in some cases.

Board members asked whether permit-fee revenue could offset the new position. Harrison and finance staff said permitting fees support operations but do not fully cover program costs; staff pointed to spreadsheet revenue lines and offered to provide a quarterly financial report with detailed revenue/expenditure matching.

What happens next: staff will supply additional budget detail on revenue offsets; the position request remains under consideration during the county's budget review.