Dear City Council, What a difference a few months can make! Last year we were struggling to fill critical public works roles and acknowledging how those staff vacancies (e.g. the departure of seasoned staff such as Angela Obeso) hindered our progress on key city council goals. Today we are considering painful cuts. Some folks in our city–fiscal hawks, mostly–have been asking you for years to reevaluate staffing size, salary levels, and pension commitments and consider outsourcing or privatizing more of our city functions. They aren't entirely wrong. It would be good at this point to evaluate all the services our government is offering and consider which are essential government functions and which could be ably assumed by private or nonprofit sector organizations. At the same time, I think if we were truly offering best-in-class salaries in our region, we wouldn't have had quite so much trouble with recruitment or retention. Thinking specifically about public works (which I'm most familiar with), our best employees are worth every penny and more because they SAVE the city money and time. How? For starters, big public works projects often span multiple council terms. Staff continuity helps keep the ball rolling forward during political transitions. Second, turnover is expensive. Aside from the inevitable time lost to recruitment and training, you also lose familiarity with the city and its population, well-oiled relationships with staff and council, and other such intangibles (remember the ramp-up period that each of you had as a new council member?) The impact isn't limited to the individual staff member either. Losing a team member requires redistributing tasks among others and bringing them up to speed on projects that they weren't familiar with before; bringing on a new team member fundamentally alters the existing dynamic among colleagues and it usually takes time to regain cruising altitude. Somehow these considerations need to be factored into the equation, hard as they are to quantify. Finally, the best employees are those most likely to have a wide range of employment alternatives (other cities, private sector) at their disposal, and are likely to be more price-sensitive. You see this in school districts–a former superintendent called it the "dance of the lemons", in which the most skilled/desirable teachers gravitated toward the cushiest/highest paying jobs and the lower paying districts tended to absorb the least desirable/skilled teachers. We probably aren't in a place to be the cushiest city to work for. But we will also get what we pay for, and at some point the savings we get from paying lower salaries won't pencil out in our favor. TLDR: some cuts are inevitable but please be strategic. If possible (considering union constraints), be especially careful with staff positions that are directly associated with critical city functions and/or important council goals (e.g. grade separation) and use other nearby cities and companies as a benchmark. If cities across the board are making similar cuts, we are safer. But don't be pennywise and pound foolish. I don't envy you the choices you have ahead and trust that you will put careful thought into both our short-term needs and our longer-term goals as a community. Thank you for your leadership during this difficult time. Sincerely, Katie -- Katie Behroozi 650.804.1812 (cell) Received on Tue May 05 2020 - 14:26:20 PDT
