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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved consolidating the Public Works and Public Services departments into a single department with 110 employees.
After more than a decade of merging with and separating from the county’s Water Resources Department – and nine months after the termination of its former director – Public Works is again undergoing a major organizational shift.
On Jan. 13, Public Services Director Lars Ewing – who is also the interim director of Public Works – presented the consolidation proposal to the board based on a recommendation from the ad hoc committee for Public Works, citing fiscal benefits and organizational efficiency.
The board at that time provided conceptual approval contingent on a follow-up analysis of fiscal and staffing impacts, which led to Tuesday’s discussion and final action. The new department will retain the name Public Works due to its higher recognition.
"There’s no layoffs proposed with this,” said Ewing at Tuesday’s board meeting. “I made that very clear to staff, and that’s never on the table.”
Ewing said the proposed merger would result in a total staffing cost of $11.64 million, with a net reduction of $235,000 from the $11.9 million of the two departments operating separately.
According to the staff memo, the reduction reflects about $104,000 in increased salary costs from position reclassification, offset by approximately $357,000 in savings from the elimination of two vacant positions, including one director position.
Ewing said management-level salary savings for the director and deputies would reach $166,000. Administrative Analyst Trevor Mockel, who is also a county spokesperson, later said in an email that the figure is an estimate based on eliminating one director’s position.
Ewing said the new department would have a single director and four deputies, each for the four divisions: maintenance, operations, administrative and community services, and engineering and projects.
“What isn’t changing is our responsibility,” Ewing said. “We're not reducing any services.”
After the presentation, Supervisor Helen Owen asked, “Is your current office location large enough to combine the two?”
Ewing said he did not yet have a definitive answer on office space, noting that neither department’s current location is large enough to “really house the staff that I believe need to be centrally located.”
“One of the next steps will be continued facilities planning,” he added, referencing the “pending vacancy” on the fourth floor of the current courthouse building due to the construction of the new courthouse.
“We have a great opportunity now to evaluate the entire courthouse as part of this consolidation,” Ewing said, adding that the review should include spaces for “any given department.”
Public Works leadership remains interim
The director position for Public Works has remained vacant since last summer.
The department’s former director, Glen March, was terminated by the board’s unanimous vote in June 2025. March was hired in June 2024, following the retirement of his predecessor, longtime director, Scott De Leon.
The department has been under interim leadership for about nine months while the county searches for a permanent hire. In October 2025, the board voted to form an ad hoc committee for Public Works that includes Supervisors Eddie Crandell and Brad Rasmussen, County Administrative Officer Susan Parker and Ewing
As interim director, Ewing laid out a five-year plan for road pavement in December, and led the pause and reevaluation of part of the Cobb Road project, which had serious quality concerns.
“I do have a really strong issue with the word 'interim,' and I hope that does get fixed sooner rather than later,” said Tom Lajcik during public comment, after expressing appreciation for Ewing’s work. “I look forward to seeing the word interim disappear from our vernacular."
As Mockel confirmed in an email response to Lake County News, Ewing also remains the interim director for the consolidated department and his pay remains unchanged at the moment.
Mockel added that appointment of a director and any adjustment to salary “would require approval by the Board of Supervisors and would be presented for consideration as part of the formal budget process.”
The job post for the director remains active on the county website, citing an annual salary range from $152,316 to $185,136.
A glance at Public Works’ merging history
During board discussion, Supervisor Bruno Sabatier asked whether the new department would continue to “help support our Water Resources.”
“No, that was in the works for quite some time to split Water Resources,” Ewing responded. He added that although the two departments still share one counter, “it’s progressing towards a true separation of departments.”
In fact, Public Works and Water Resources have had a long history of repeated “marriage and divorce,” according to Lake County News’ coverage for the past 17 years.
Water Resources was a division under the Public Works department from 1993 to 2009, when the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved making the division its own freestanding department.
Two years later, in May 2011, the same board again voted unanimously to merge the two departments into one.
The merger proposal was pitched by De Leon, who had been hired by the county as director of Water Resources in 2010.
In the meantime, the board also immediately appointed De Leon as the director of the consolidated department with a 5-percent raise based on his monthly pay at $8,085.64.
In 2016, the board voted to separate the two, but in 2019 it voted to reconsolidate them.
In 2021, the proposal to split was brought to the board again by then-County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson.
At that meeting, De Leon – who was leading both departments again – said over Zoom that he was against the split.
The board took no action.
In January 2024, the board finally decided to separate the two departments and started searching for new leadership for both the Water Resources and Public Works departments – as it was anticipated that De Leon was planning to retire in June.
This time, De Leon said he favored a separation because it would already be difficult to find someone qualified to be the Public Works director, and even harder to find someone who also understands Water Resources.
In June 2024, the Board of Supervisors hired the current Water Resources Director Pawan Upadhyay, and March as the Public Works director who stayed on the job for a year.
In 2011 when De Leon proposed the merger and first rose as the director leading the consolidated department, Ewing served as his deputy.
Fifteen years later, Ewing’s proposal was accepted too – this time for Public Works to marry a different department.
Lingzi Chen is a staff reporter at Lake County News and a 2024-2026 California Local News Fellow. Email her at lchen@lakeconews.com.
