| Kitsap County’s record on employee retention is abysmal within the Department of Community Development (DCD): notably, with planners in the Community Planning Division and at higher management levels. Last year, I heard highlights of this record cited in oral testimony during a meeting regarding Kingston and Suquamish. Next, a member of the audience (who declined to speak publicly) confided to me her reaction when the latest people in a series of DCD replacements for planning efforts in North Kitsap appeared at a long-postponed meeting. “It felt like a slap in the face.”
Given yet another sudden exit at the Director level at the onset of 2006, it’s easy to imagine even more of Kitsap’s caring, committed citizens are recoiling from the slap of short-sighted employee churning. Communities need and deserve reasonable continuity.
Citizens devote precious time to engage in public process for the public good. They do so while tackling steep learning curves, absorbing logistical costs and juggling personal obligations so they can show up and make a difference in their community’s future. When slapped with abrupt turnover, the memory lingers. Respect fades and trust erodes.
Next, the County must renew efforts to effectively engage constituents to make headway on complex endeavors. Reassigned staff face learning curves and inevitably, something falls through the cracks — at taxpayer expense.
In addition, neglecting the fundamentals of employee retention does not escape notice by parties such as the Growth Management Hearings Board, especially when the County begs for extra time on certain issues, claiming that high turnover makes workload management tough. Nor does this reputation go unnoticed by planning professionals throughout the region, who trade notes during seminars and on other occasions.
The County, local businesses and residents are the end-losers when potential candidates for Kitsap job vacancies learn the pathetic history i.e. employee churn, then wisely turn elsewhere to grow their careers.
Of course, some attrition is natural in any public sector workplace. The attrition rate at DCD has been disruptively unnatural in recent years. If another dysfunctional round of churning has been triggered in 2006, the consequences could be dire. While the Silverdale/Central Kitsap Sub-area Plan appears headed in a sound direction, the effort could easily prove futile and citizens could become jaded and disillusioned, if not downright outraged, if unconscionable churning of employees does not cease.
Dulce Setterfield
Port Orchard
(Editor’s Note: Ms. Setterfield worked as a planner at Kitsap County DCD in 2004.). | 
