|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
In March, when Menlo Park City Council members discussed a study of the city’s downtown economy, they were reminded of how staff vacancies are putting a strain on the city’s resources and its ability to pursue both urgent and less time-sensitive projects like downtown improvements.
When council member Drew Combs asked about the status of hiring an economic development planner, Interim City Manager Justin Murphy said that it was one of about 40 open jobs at the city out of a total 271.75 full-time equivalent positions in the budget, citing a Jan. 25 personnel report. The total number includes City Council members, according to Murphy. Part of the problem? The team that recruits job candidates was itself suffering from “staffing challenges,” Murphy said at the time.
A new report from the city shows that the vacancy numbers don’t run as deep as they did a few months ago, but the city’s staffing woes remain: About 27 city positions are unfilled, representing a 10% vacancy rate, and 10 of them are for executive and management positions.
Vacancies are felt across almost every department from administrative services to public works, to library and community services to the city manager’s office. This includes a community development director, senior civil engineer, city planners and a building inspector, Murphy said.
The 10 executive and management positions are for administrative services, community development, library and community services, the public works department and the city manager’s office.
Five of those roles are filled with an interim or acting employee, the report stated. This includes Murphy, the interim city manager, who essentially functions as the city’s CEO, and is responsible for executing the budget and enforcing policies adopted by City Council.
According to an April 12 staff report, the city has been working with a management consulting firm, Hawkins Group, to find a permanent city manager since September.
Longtime city staffer Murphy stepped into the interim role in January, after then-City Manager Starla Jerome-Robinson abruptly resigned months before she was set to retire.
Since then, the City Council had at least seven meetings behind closed doors regarding the city manager position.
“It is fair to say that Menlo Park, like other Bay Area cities and private employers, is experiencing real challenges in filling its open positions,” Mayor Betsy Nash said. Nash declined to comment on the current hiring progress for the city manager position.
On April 12, the City Council approved a $10,000 increase to Murphy’s salary, following the recommendation of a staff report which stated that he has “ably served the organization and community” and that he has taken on the interim role longer than anticipated.
“We try to do the best we can to deliver services to the community,” Murphy said.
These empty seats don’t just present an issue for the city’s immediate priorities but also for those that Menlo Park may want to pursue in the near future.
The personnel report was also attached to a draft budget report for the city’s next fiscal year that outlines some of the expected costs for new employees in this week’s council agenda for a reason, Murphy said. If Menlo Park wants to, say, restart its popular gymnastics program, which has been shut down since the beginning of the pandemic, the city will have to add an additional 5.75 full-time employees, potentially placing more burden on the city’s human resources personnel.
“There’s a limited capacity of staff who actually are experts in running recruitment,” Murphy said. “That is probably our pinch point as well.”
On Tuesday, when council members reviewed a draft budget for Menlo Park and some of the potential budgeting priorities requested from various city departments, Nash and council member Cecilia Taylor both said that they didn’t want to add an additional burden on city resources to find gymnastics employees at a time when the city is still facing vacancies.
“Given that we have a 24% vacancy rate in our community development department … I believe we need to focus all possible resources on those vacancies,” Nash said.
Another indication of the city’s current staffing troubles? The report itself was prepared by Mary Morris-Mayorga, who is listed as an administrative services director and an “extra help retired annuitant,” referring to a statewide program that allows qualified retirees to take on a temporary position with little to no training.
MP website only shows 9 open positions (https://beta.menlopark.org/Jobs). If there are 27 open positions we should get them listed on the website.
https://beta.menlopark.org/Jobs
The site only list 9 open positions that have been listed for quite some time. The site is rarely updated.
If we were able to provide some of the most critical positions a chance to live and own at the upcoming SRI site you would have a flood of applicants,
Let’s be proactive,
Is it known why Menlo Park’s City Manager and Police Chief both voluntarily and abruptly quit their respective positions recently? I do not have a good understanding of either situation but it does beg the question of whether our City Council bears some level of responsibility and whether this is related to our inability to fill some of the key management positions.
@MP Father, the Police Chief was unable to bear even discussing how residents viewed the police and how to better serve the community, so he quit in a tantrum – extremely unprofessional, and we are much better for having our new Police Chief, David Norris who is really good at engaging the community. (But as the story states, there are no vacancies in the police dept., so all this is neither here nor there with regard to vacancies.)
The city manager lost the confidence of the majority of the city council, but she had two supporters. After it was discovered that she dropped the ball on the city utility tax, leading to the current lawsuit, she resigned, appearing to validate the concerns about her performance.
It’s hard for anyone to hire these days, because during the pandemic, wage earners left or found other ways to support themselves, and the pay is too low to enable people to live close enough to work to make it worthwhile.
It would be wise for apologists not to slander the former City Manager. She chose to enter retirement gracefully, but I for one would be interested in hearing what she has to say regarding the current City Council majority and how they treated her and city staff.