City Hall Shake-Up to Lead to Downtown Revitalization, Other Long-Term Goals

Before it breathes new life into downtown and conjures up ways to turn profits on San Juan Capistrano's vast swaths of open spaces, the City Council will first need to shake up the staffing model in City Hall, it decided Wednesday.

That includes filling vacant managerial posts. Currently, there's no one in charge of roping in new businesses, nor anyone overseeing San Juan's utilities department or guiding operations at its vast swaths of protected open spaces.

The reorganization will also include and potentially outsourcing such positions as those dedicated to payroll and historic preservation.

"We need to get the whole staff settled down so they can get to the rest of this stuff," Laura Freese said in reference to a list of six priorities she and other City Council members set Wednesday with the help of.

At a lengthy goal-setting retreat at the open to the public—though few residents actually attended—the council members, foregoing their suits and ties, casually bantered about their visions for the small town.

Also at the top of their list: ensuring that the city's Groundwater Recovery Plant pump out water to its full capacity. Three years after it took over operation of the plant from the SouthWest Water Co., San Juan Capistrano is . It's importing a substantial portion of its water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

That will require someone to actually run the utilities department.

Brust recently told the Capistrano Dispatch that she expects to fill the vacant utilities director position in August. The seat was last filled by , who in the interim ran the department, and the rest of City Hall as the former city manager. (He's remained on a consultant.)

Although Tait is credited with helping with Chevron over its leak of MTBE in the city's groundwater supply and for getting rid of  high concentrations of iron and manganese that turned drinking water brown, it's been two years since the department has had a full-time director. 

Brust told the Dispatch that nine applicants for utilities director were interviewed earlier this month by a panel of three utilities experts: Karl W. Seckel, assistant general manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County and two San Diego County water officials.

The council will also need to look at hiring an open-space manager if it wants to make money off of all of the open, public green space in town. Mayor Sam Allevato, who currently works for the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, threw out ideas such as transforming the spaces into wedding venues.

On the table already are plans to  and, possibly, .

There was also much talk Wednesday about whether the council members want to see from Camino Real to Camino Capistrano, making the area more friendly to pedestrians.

Bigger sidewalks are included in the first phase of , currently undergoing environmental reviews. Seeing the environmental report come to fruition is No. 4 on the council's new list of priorities.

The City Council also said it wants to reach for the plan's "low hanging" fruit, by making easy adjustments that the plan calls for—bigger sidewalks included.

There's concern that reducing the width of the streets to accommodate wider sidewalks will bottleneck traffic in the area. But those who want to see restaurants set up tables on the sidewalk, and more benches, flowers and trees added there, say that in a few years traffic on Ortega Highway won't be an issue. 

Del Obispo Street is designed to be the gateway into downtown when Caltrans .

All of these changes will lead to the sixth priority of the council: getting the city's "fiscal house in order."

Recent projections from the city's finance department . Additionally, the .