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The project with carson street master plan was a traffic calming project. We are doing several different
studies across the City to improve our traffic flow. We are working with the County of Los Angeles to
bring in several thousand new trips aday - because it borders our City it is going to have a lot of impact
on our City. We are developing costs that they would cover. When I got to the City of Carson - they
hadn't done a pavement management study in awhile. So there was no way to understand our needs.
We made sure that as we were improving the streets we were doing it in a methodical way vs. doing it as
we get phone calls. Now we can go ask for funding, because we already have a roadmap laid out. They
had put together a bicycle masterplan before I go there but we hadn't been able to move forward on
construction, we secured about $10m for both design and construction of four different locations. So we
are getting close to addressing the five year bicycle master plan.
The State of California has passed laws requiring increased recycling of Organic Waste, with the
goal of reducing disposal of organic waste by 50 percent compared to 2014 levels, by 2020.
Please provide your experience with recycling and solid waste in addressing this issue.
We have, our City doesn’t have a department that handles this specifically. We have a franchise
agreement with a hauler. We had the same one for several decades. Since I've been here we went out
for bid and we made sure that there were specific requirements that had measurements around our
compliance - and we have to deal with our vendor and CalRecycle to make sure we are track with those.
We also began instituting an awareness campaign to let residential and commercial customers aware of
what they can do to meet that to make sure that we comply.
What experience do you have in supervising a diverse group of employees, mentoring and growing
them, and what employment issues and challenges have you faced in embracing diversity?
I have had employees along the full spectrum. In terms of making sure they are the best employees
they can be, I do a lot of oneonones with them. I make sure that there's always a budget available for
training, and my expectation is that people will take advantage of that by needs they have identified
themselves or their direct managers have identified. I also do field visits with the staff and
opportunities for improvement. Make sure that performance evaluations are done in a timely manner.
As I identify needs and opportunities there are certain classes that I require my managers to go to
there are a couple that were recently completed to improve their supervisory skills. I made sure that I
used money that we had in our budget. I give them opportunities to stretch themselves I do what I
can to get them some exposure. If someone in my department is interested in planning then I would
have them join us in meetings when we are talking about development around projects for the
planning commission and those types of things.
I have also developed an apprenticeship program. When we're having an issue with spanish speaking
vs. nonspanish speaking employees I began having some classes offered so that people would have
more comfort with communicating.
I have had to fire people and put people on probation so I am always in meetings in skully meetings
with those I work closely with HR or our Attorney.
The DPW will manage seven divisions and a staff of over 700. What do you see as the challenges
and what is your experience in managing multiple divisions?
I think the biggest challenge with managing multiple divisions is a lot of communication. Sometimes
there can be a lot of silos - it's making sure that from start to finish there is a lot of involvement. Key
elements are being able to gather and decipher data to make sure that you are focused in the right
direction. The approach could be pretty subjective and you want to take the subjectivity out of it. A lot of
baseline data is important, as is having one strategic plan if there are questions about how to move
forward with something.
Anything else you would like to add? If out of area? Are you willing to relocate to the Bay Area
