YOUNGSVILLE — The City of Youngsville is moving forward with hiring someone to oversee planning and development.
During tonight's meeting, council members unanimously decided to amend the budget to hire a Director of Planning, Permitting, and Engineering.
Mayor Ken Ritter says there's no better time than now.
The city continues to grow as several businesses are looking to expand in the new year, and that's just commercial development. There are over 1,400 home sites in various stages of development.
"The volume of work that we're seeing come in for permitting and plan review today justifies the creation of an in-house position," said Mayor Ritter.
As of now, the city uses outside consultants to handle private development in the city.
With the new hire, developers will have access to someone internally, which, according to the mayor, will make the development process faster.
"The design will continued to be handled by outside engineering consultants," explained Ritter. "All I'm looking to do is really take a look at the way we do plan reviews and permitting and allow those functions to be handled internally by a city employee."
The city budgets $300,000 for the use of outside consultants.
The new position will pay between $85-100,000.
"In the end, it will be a cost-saving measure because the amount that we're spending on general engineering services, outsourcing that service, bringing it in will save our taxpayers' dollars, and I think it's the right move as we start the new year," said Ritter.
Ritter says they're looking to move fairly quickly with the hiring process and that they're hoping to have someone in place within the first quarter.
