"We're between a rock and a hard place," she says. "You're damned if you do and damned if you don't."
Moulton has never been accused of shying away from confrontation. Though she lacks a background in planning, friends and enemies alike say she has brought a high degree of intelligence and forthrightness to her job. Formerly an architect with Barker, Rinker, Seacat & Partners, she went on to head the Historic Denver preservation group before joining the Webb administration in 1992 as the first female head of the department.
"Jennifer is smart," says Larry Levi, a real estate consultant and activist with the Upper Downtown Development Organization. "And she's a real straight-shooter. I may not agree with her, but at least I know she's not playing games with me."
Roz Schneider, a marketing partner at Barker, Rinker, Seacat who worked with Moulton for several years at the firm, says she has had her own sharp battles with Moulton in the past. But "whether I agree with her not," she says, "I respect her.
"I'm sure she's rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, because that's the way she operates," adds Schneider. "If she has a mind to make things change at the planning office and clean house, there's nothing that's going to stop her. I suspect that doesn't set well with a lot of people who've been there forever."
Moulton says the rumors of a feud between her and the CDA's Ann Mitre probably have been fueled by plans to consolidate community development into one office. Currently eight CDA employees are working in the Columbine Building on 16th Street. The city thinks it makes more sense to have them working with the rest of the CDA staff, now housed in the permit building at Bannock Street and 14th Avenue. This may require relocating the agency out of planning to another site, she says.
"Ann Mitre is a very ambitious, bright, thoughtful woman," Moulton says. "I am an ambitious, bright, thoughtful woman. And sometimes we don't agree...What can I tell you? We're both stubborn and we're both opinionated. And it makes for lively times."
(Mitre agrees that rumors of a personality clash have been "blown out of proportion" and says a move by CDA would be nothing more than routine bureaucratic reorganization. "There shouldn't be any cause for concern," Mitre says. "There really won't be any change at all except that the community development staff will be able to operate more effectively.")
But while Moulton downplays the alleged rift with Mitre, she acknowledges that morale among the planning staff is a concern. Most of the unhappiness, she says, stems from the creation of a layer of middle management that she ordered early in her tenure. Planners who were accustomed to instant access to the department head now must first go to one of three assistants--Bar Chadwick, David Wicks or Harriet Hogue.
In 1992 Moulton hired a consultant to hold a series of what she called "town meeting workshops" designed to identify the reasons for low morale and to come up with solutions. Since then she has conducted follow-up surveys of the planning staff. The results have been underwhelming. One poll taken last November showed that about half of the 74 employees surveyed believed there had been "some improvement" in relations between staff and management. When it came time to grade morale in the office, however, 30 percent gave the department a C, 29 percent a D and 24 percent an F. Only 17 percent picked A or B. (The results of another, more recent survey still are being tabulated.)
"No planning director has taken more time to listen to staff people's problems and to try to work them out," Moulton says. But she adds that her primary goal remains to serve the mayor. "I didn't come here to win a popularity contest," she says. "I came here to put a structure in place so we could get a whole lot of work done."
As for the city's relations with neighborhoods, Moulton says her office is trying hard not to lose touch. There are obstacles, however: The fiscal constraints of Amendment 1 prevent the planning department from just going out and hiring more people to relieve an overworked staff. And DIA and the other big projects that have taken so much time and attention in the past aren't going to go away soon. The closing of Lowry alone, she says, consumes as much as a quarter of her time.
"I know there is frustration because there are fewer resources," Moulton says. But "these are unusual circumstances," she adds. "We're doing the best we can.
