The City and Borough of Juneau will begin the new year with a new deputy city manager.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the CBJ announced that its human resources director, Mila Cosgrove, will replace Rob Steedle as deputy city manager. Steedle, who has been double-hatted as the interim director of community development, will move into that position full-time. The switch becomes effective Jan. 4.<\/p>\n
The position of deputy manager has become more important since sitting manager Kim Kiefer announced her pending retirement. At the end of October, after an initial review of replacements wasn\u2019t promising, the city extended its recruitment period and announced that Kiefer would delay her retirement until the end of April.<\/p>\n
Likewise, the city has had trouble replacing Community Development Director Hal Hart, who left his job in September. Steedle said he has enjoyed filling in for Hart and helping projects move through permitting in the CBJ.<\/p>\n
Steedle said he and Kiefer were discussing the issue and she, \u201cin a more or less offhand way, said one day … \u2018Maybe you should take it, Rob.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t realize I was that transparent,\u201d Steedle said. \u201cI thought about it and talked about it and said, \u2018If you\u2019re serious, I\u2019m serious.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Steedle\u2019s move will result in a pay cut for himself, but he said he\u2019s interested in solving some of the problems the city faces with development, including land use restrictions.<\/p>\n
After Steedle made his decision, the question became who would replace him as deputy manager. Cosgrove, the CBJ\u2019s HR director, was already involved in the process and put her name up for the position.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m quite happy to step into the deputy role,\u201d she said, adding that she likes the work the city does and likes \u201cthat we serve our friends and neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she doesn\u2019t have a particular target for change at the CBJ, except to continue doing good work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really see it as coming in and saying this needs to change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Also on Friday, the city formally announced the creation of the Chief Housing Officer position in the CBJ. This director-level position, which will report to the deputy city manager or manager, will be paid $92,000 to $98,000 annually to oversee all of the CBJ\u2019s efforts to improve the availability of housing in Juneau and reduce its cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that having this new key position will pick up on the work Hal Hart was doing in generating enthusiasm for maximizing the use of properties,\u201d Steedle said.<\/p>\n
He added that the ideal candidate is \u201csomeone that makes deals happen,\u201d whether in the private sector or with organizations including the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation.<\/p>\n
The job has been advertised since Nov. 24 on the city\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The City and Borough of Juneau will begin the new year with a new deputy city manager. On Friday, the CBJ announced that its human resources director, Mila Cosgrove, will replace Rob Steedle as deputy city manager. Steedle, who has been double-hatted as the interim director of community development, will move into that position full-time. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":16299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16298"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}