Renovations to Begin at County Administration Center

Our jewel on the bay, the historic County Administration Center, will soon undergo major renovations.

The structure dates back to 1938 and to help the landmark weather another 81 years, the County will make significant upgrades, inside and out.

General Services is working with Turner Construction Company and Sillman Wright Architects to conduct the five-year, $108 million project.

Work to transform the building’s lower level into temporary office space is already underway.

Floor by floor, the structure will see changes. From new ceilings and LED lighting to exterior windows that will be repaired or replaced. The CAC will get new emergency generators, upgraded fire alarms and sprinklers, and a uniform heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The building’s exterior will get a new coat of paint. Historical elements like the marble, mahogany wood and original light fixtures in the hallways and lobby won’t be affected.      

The three murals in the Board Chambers will also be protected but when completed, the interior will feature new seating in a different configuration, a new dais, different flooring and an enhanced A/V system with new cameras and monitors.

The work requires the Board of Supervisors meetings to temporarily move to a new location. After Aug. 8, the Board meetings will take place at the County Operations Center (COC) Hearing Room through December. In order to accommodate this shift, the COC site needs audio/visual upgrades to record the Board meetings and those changes will start in May.

That means the County Planning Commission meetings will move. Those sessions will relocate to the CAC Board Chambers from May through June. 

Much of the CAC construction work will be conducted at night so normal business isn’t interrupted. But employees on each affected floor will move to temporary spaces while their offices are under renovation.   

In June, the Clerk of the Board’s office will move from the fourth floor to the lower level. People coming in for passports and other COB services will be directed to the new location. In the fall, work will begin on the south end of the fourth floor.

The construction will work its way down, generally one floor a year, until the project is completed. 

The overall construction project will limit space for department meetings. The County is leasing large conference rooms in hotels within walking distance. For room availability, check here.

General Services will provide details on office relocations and other changes to CAC employees in quarterly newsletters. The project is scheduled to wrap up in 2024.

Those Who Came First

Sam Brown, an elder in the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, spoke at the County Operations Center on April 2.

San Diego County has more Indian reservations than any other county in the U.S. In an effort to get to know our neighbors and to further promote diversity and inclusion, the Department of Human Resources recently hosted a presentation from a member of the Kumeyaay for employees. 

Sam Brown, an elder in the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, shared stories of culture and community in a lunchtime gathering at the County Operations Center. He also took questions at the session titled “Those Who Came First: The Kumeyaay Nation.”

“The most important tradition, as far as I am concerned, is understanding the culture and history and applying it to the things that are happening today,” said Brown.

If you missed the session, you can still take a short lesson with Brown. He has a series of videos available online. Learn to pronounce Kumeyaay, how to say hello and listen to tribal stories.

Learning more about our neighbors goes a long way in serving the community and being truly inclusive. The following additional D&I training sessions are available to employees on the Learning Management System (LMS):

·       Cultural Competency Overview

·       Diversity and Inclusion for Supervisors

·       Embracing Diversity and Inclusion

·       Generations in the Workplace

·       Promoting an Inclusive Workplace

·       Serving Diverse Customers

To learn more about the County’s D&I initiatives, visit the initiative webpage.

Edgemoor Holds Tasty D&I Event

Edgemoor held a delicious and diverse cook-off this week. Employees at the skilled nursing facility entered dishes from around the world into the first-ever “Taste of Edgemoor.”

Dishes were judged on taste, aroma, presentation and healthiness. Entries included Mexican stew, Japanese beef curry, Toscano sausage spinach soup, Filipino sinigang soup, Norwegian meatballs, kale vegetable soup, and Korean japchae—a dish of stir-fried glass noodles and vegetables.

Medical Records Manager Hernan Amezcua won the cooking competition with a family recipe—his dad’s birria with beef and pork ribs. While Amezcua has been enjoying the dish his entire life, he only recently got his hands on the recipe after asking for the secret details for some 30 years!

The winning dish will be served as the lunch special to both residents and employees on Cinco de Mayo.

D&I Champion Lani Ngo said the event brought together employees and was fun.

“We truly represented and celebrated diversity and inclusion with food,” she said.

How does your department celebrate diversity and inclusion? Tell us in the comment section below.

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This story came to us from an employee’s suggestion. Suggest a Story

PerkSpot: Cirque du Soleil Tickets

This deal will have you doing backflips! Get Cirque du Soleil tickets for up to 38% off.

To find your tickets, search for “Volta by Cirque du Soleil” on PerkSpot.

The big top will be at the Del Mar Fairgrounds for performances through May 5.

PerkSpot offers benefits and discounts through more than 400 service providers and retailers. Go to SDCounty.PerkSpot.com and shop. If you are new, click on “Create an Account” to register.

APACE Serves Up Lunch

Members of the Asian Pacific Alliance of County Employees (APACE) recently served meals to 260 seniors at the Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center in downtown San Diego. The employee resource group members volunteered with Serving Seniors, a nonprofit which serves low-income and food-insecure seniors. They plated food, delivered trays, talked to the seniors and hosted a fun raffle for participants.

APACE holds volunteer events with community partners throughout the year. To learn more about APACE, visit them on InSite.

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This story came to us from an employee’s suggestion. Suggest a Story

InTouch - Who We Are

It’s important to know our customers. And since we need to serve our fellow employees every bit as well as we do the public, we also need to know our colleagues. You know many individually. But as a group, who are we, what do we look like?

Our County team is around 17,000 strong, and as you’d expect with that many people, we’re a varied bunch.

Sometimes it might seem like a lot of employees have been here a long time, and of course, many have. But the numbers show that’s not the whole story. Last year, 1,451 employees joined the County from the outside (welcome!). Everything is new to them – from their daily duties to understanding our culture.

Roughly another 2,000 existing employees were promoted (congratulations!). That’s almost 3,500 people in new positions. That’s a lot of learning, a lot of people who need help getting into their roles so they can be successful. 

In fact, nearly 6,000 of us have been here under five years! If you’ve been around for a while and are ever tempted to think something is common knowledge, remind yourself how new many of our colleagues are. Help them along. If you’re new, don’t be afraid to ask about things. We know there’s a lot to pick up. 

A handful are really in it for the long haul. Fourteen employees have been here 40 years or more, with our longest-serving worker at 47 years!

Our workers range from 20 to 83 years old, with an average age of 44. The average for the national workforce is about 42. So we’re a touch older, but not much.  

You can expect some of the next generation to come from those who are now student workers. We had 391 last year. Our District Attorney’s Office had the highest number of any department: 93.

We tilt pretty heavily female. Our workforce is 59 percent women, and it’s been that way for a while. County jobs don’t mirror those of society at large. We have a lot of positions in fields that tend to disproportionately draw women.

Our largest age group is 27-40 years old, approximately the range we know as millennials, aka Gen Y. They make up about 41 percent of our workforce. They’ve nosed ahead of the next group, those 41-56, roughly Gen Xers, who are just over 39 percent. Then Boomers, 57-73, still make up about 15 percent. The incoming Gen Z, people up to age 26, are already 5 percent. We still have a few Silent Generation members, 74 years old and up, on the job. We’ve talked pretty extensively about some of the differences, but it’s really exciting to get to work with people across five generations. We can learn so much from each other.

Racial/ethnic identities can get quite complex, but at a high level, here’s how we break down and how that compares to the San Diego region at the last census: 0.6 percent American Indian/Native American (compared to 0.5 percent in San Diego overall). Nearly 19 percent Asian or Pacific Islander (vs. 12 percent locally). Almost 8 percent black/African American (to 4.6 percent of San Diegans). 32.6 percent Hispanic/Latino (vs. 28.3 percent of residents). And just over 40 percent are white (vs. 54.5 percent regionally).  

Almost 2,000 of our County employees are sworn officers. That includes Sheriff’s personnel, Probation officers, District Attorney investigators.

In recent years we’ve worked harder to get veterans of the armed forces to join us, and they now make up 6.6 percent of our employees. We thank them for their service and for continuing to serve the public with us.

That’s a quick snapshot of our employees as a whole and some indication of the diversity within our County team. But only some indication. We’re diverse in all kinds of ways we don’t gather statistics for: where we’re from, the culture our families shared with us, our beliefs, our challenges, our passions, and the whole gamut of life experiences. We fall into many different categories that make each of us unique and interesting. And when we bring our individual talents and backgrounds together, it makes exciting teams!

Looking at these numbers is fun but also has a purpose. I share them to help us better understand our fellow employees, so we might serve each other, and in turn the public, better. Because regardless of all these other groups we may be a part of, it’s the qualities we bring to our jobs that really define us at the County. Respectful, attentive, compassionate, hardworking public servants – that's who we are. 

Your County Connection for April 2019

On this episode of County Connection, see how you can “cultivate” your own green thumb with some help from a Master Gardener, meet some friends that might “bug” you, and see how the County is making it “rain” for some lucky local non-profits.