Community Development Director Decamps for (Literal) Greener Pastures

Musical chairs continues in city hall with the surprise announcement that our Community Development director, Timothea Tway, will soon leave the city after a decade with the city. Tway came on board as a planner but quickly climbed the ladder culminating with a recent promotion to department director in January. While that’s a lot to walk away from, the greener pastures of San Luis Obispo no doubt promises a better quality-of-life. Still the shake-up begs many questions. Foremost among them: What will her departure mean for rent stabilization?

Once again our local papers simply printed a city press release without asking (much less answering) what this change in top management may mean for Beverly Hills. The gist from the press release:

Timothea Tway, Director of Community Development for the City of Beverly Hills, has accepted the same role for the City of San Luis Obispo, effective June 19….Tway joined the City of Beverly Hills in 2012 as an Assistant Planner and later served as Associate Planner, Senior Planner, Principal Planner, and City Planner before being named Director in 2022. The City will announce the process for selecting a new Director of Community Development in the coming weeks.

For those not counting, Tway climbed six rungs on the city hall ladder in only eleven years — an impressive record of steady advancement in a city where promotions can happen without apparent reason or rationale. In that context Tway’s ascendance appeared meritorious; each step represented an incremental assumption of greater responsibilities.

Pivotal Moment

Tway was rising to the top job at Community Development just as Sacramento was ushering-in a new era of residential construction and redevelopment. It promises to displace tenants and add to instability in our local rental housing market and yet city hall appears totally unprepared to grapple with it.

The timing is what makes her departure so problematic. As director she was now in a position to shape the city’s policy response to intractable problems like housing affordability and availability.

In terms of managing-down, Tway won’t have the opportunity to work with incoming deputy director Nestor Otazu to make much-needed improvements to rent stabilization programs and processes. Otazu is an experienced manager who may well have some ideas about rent stabilization, but we were greatly comforted knowing that Tway could keep a watchful eye on the division under Otazu’s leadership. (Otazu reports to the director.)

In terms of managing-up, Tway was a trusted and experienced hand who could credibly represent tenant concerns to city council and propose policies to get us through the new era of housing instability.

Having that representation at city council is more important than ever given that the current council majority has shown less than firm support for tenant protections.

For example we proposed an extension to the city’s moratorium rent arrears repayment deadline of June 1, 2023. Could city council give tenants with rent arrears until January to repay it? No dice said the council majority. Councilmembers were not particularly interested in entertaining any additional tenant protections either.

In late June city council will establish the coming fiscal year’s maximum allowable annual rent increase. Will council agree to a rent hike equal to the rate of inflation — which we estimate to be about 3.5% — or will council allow landlords to add a percentage point (or three) to make up for ‘missed’ pandemic-era rent increases? It would have been good to have Tway at the meeting but she leaves town ten days before that discussion can commence.

Other important unfinished business awaits the incoming director of Community Development. The city is struggling to convince the state to approve our state-mandated Housing Element, for example. Tway was managing that effort but now we will change horses.

City hall is expected to enter into an agreement to build long-awaited and much-needed affordable housing for seniors on city land. The details of that deal are yet to be determined but Tway will have had valuable input as she formerly was overseeing long-range planning.

But Tway’s departure will be most missed closest to home, so to speak, across divisions that most affect renting households.

The Community Preservation division (aka code enforcement) has been without a manager since Otazu was moved to rent stabilization. That division is also down an officer since the one tasked to the Rent Stabilization (Michal Masini) unexpectedly quit a month ago. More important the division is under-resourced but there is no manager in place to make that case during council’s coming budget sessions.

It is also unfortunate for tenants that we are losing the only senior Community Development management we are likely to see who also rents her housing. She understands the concerns of tenants and was in a better position than most anybody in city hall to advocate for our interests.

Greener Pastures

We wish Timmi well as she heads to greener pastures in San Luis Obispo. That is probably the best place for a planner and administrator who keeps her ear tuned to the community. In fact that’s probably why SLO city hired her. In fact the city posted an online survey to ask the community what they wanted in the next Community Development director.

“Your valuable input will assist San Luis Obispo as we consider the best candidate for our community,” said the city in the survey questionnaire. “Your input is essential to defining the ‘ideal’ candidate and will be integrated into the recruitment process.”

Just imagine city hall reaching out to the Beverly Hills community to ask what we want in our next Community Development director. You will have to imagine it because it won’t ever happen. If experience is any guide that appointment is all but finalized; the job posting will be a mere formality. And the appointment announcement will be made only when city hall is good and ready. We-the-people are the last to know.