Prescott named director of Community Development Department

March 7, 2016 12:57 PM PT

Patrick Prescott was named director of Burbank’s Community Development Department, according to a statement released Friday.

Interim City Manager Ron Davis named Prescott to the post permanently. He had been serving as interim director since January and has worked for the city for more than a decade, including most recently the city’s deputy city planner.

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“He’s the leader best equipped to move the Community Development Department forward,” Davis said in the statement.

Prescott had been selected to lead the department after a search conducted by an executive search firm last year, but then-City Manager Mark Scott declined to appoint him to the post permanently in January, during his last month with the city, with the idea that the decision should be left to his successor.

The departments Prescott will oversee include building, planning, transportation as well as housing and economic development.

Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland

Chad Garland

Chad Garland covered the city of Burbank and Bob Hope Airport for the Burbank Leader until 2016. Previously, he has covered Arizona’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., for Cronkite News Service and Oregon’s Legislature for the Associated Press. His work investigating questionable veterans’ charities as part of the award-winning News21 national investigative project “Back Home” earned a “Best in Business” award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2013. Before becoming a reporter, he spent more than a decade in various assignments related to national defense. An Illinois native, his first California address was at Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. He has degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University, as well as a diploma from the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, where he learned to speak Russian.