No Transparency, No Support, No Growth - City Planner City of Renton Employee Review

Good, positive culture, great work-life balance, strong union presence.

Rigid on-site policies, may not work for someone who wants greater flexibility

1) Most staff are dedicated, career civil servants and wonderful people. Day-to-day, I had a great experience and loved the people I worked with, both on my own team and from other divisions/departments. 2) My boss cared about and invested in my professional development. She always made time for me and is an excellent leader.

1) I don’t know what HR is doing upstairs, but they’ve bungled *at least one thing* at pretty much every stage of my employment with the City of Renton. The hiring process was messy and slow. They didn’t provide my boss any training on supplemental employee requirements. At the end, they didn’t warn me my position would be disappearing until I only had 22 hours left (and 7 of those were already committed to a multi-day training). HR didn’t care if this meant I’d be setting up my team to drop balls. They didn’t care if they put me in a situation of being suddenly without income. They only cared about not wanting to set a precedent for turning a supplemental position into a benefited position. I’ve demonstrated for months that I’m an excellent employee, and my division needs the staffing. But the HR Administrator doesn’t want to give me benefits, so end of discussion and good luck on your next venture. 2) Mayor Pavone isn’t actually interested in equity or building partnerships with community organizations. Partnerships have to be *mutually beneficial*. He only wants nice photos for Insta so he can look like he’s investing in the community. But at meetings with equity-focused community leaders, the tone is very much about what they can do to promote the Mayor’s image, not what the government can do to serve the community. 3) Police have loads of money and keep getting more money. Meanwhile, the rest of the departments are under pressure to do more with less. As the population grows and we’re serving more people, we don’t get more staff. Only PD gets staffing commensurate with the growth in population.