Richmond city staff members on Tuesday continued to urge the city council to stop giving its maxed-out workforce more things to do while leaving positions vacant.
Compounding the issue is an impending contract agreement with the city’s public safety unions that could drastically increase labor costs.
City Manager Shasa Curl sent a crystal-clear message to the council at Tuesday’s meeting: If it wants to fill vacancies, it must stop creating new positions and slow down on new initiatives.
The vacancies conversation was a continuation of last week’s tense special budget session where city staff suggested moving “discretionary” money from funds including immigration services and unhoused services to cover budget shortfalls for the Shields-Reid and Wendell park improvements, the Wellness Trail and the Bay Trail at Point Molate.
SOS Richmond representatives had advocated at Tuesday’s meeting to keep their funding, and it looks like city staff found the $2.6 million it needed for the park and trail projects elsewhere.
The budget shortfall will be covered by funds from the Point Molate Beach stabilization project budget and the civic center landscaping and vehicle fleet budgets.
The council approved the changes though the 2026-27 $275 million spending plan is balanced based on the assumption that 12% of open positions will remain vacant. The council will adopt a final budget on June 23, and it’s set to go into effect July 1.
According to city data through December 2025, there were 810 city positions budgeted and 661 positions filled, resulting in an 18% vacancy rate.
The city has balanced its budget in recent years by leaving positions open. City employees are questioning this practice, telling the city council during Tuesday’s hiring and retention public hearing that they’re concerned about staff burnout.
Kevin Tisdale, a Richmond code enforcement officer and president of the city’s SEIU 1021 chapter, and Josiah Branaman, field representative from SEIU, said what ends up happening is that the city has to sheepishly hire contractors and part-timers to get timely jobs done.
“They are telling us that if we want to get the contracts done, we need to agree to the contracting out of union work,” Branaman said. “The other option is to hire part-timers who are eager to work above their classification to increase their hireability to fulltime which never comes.”
Tisdale said although the city budget called for a 9% vacancy rate for SEIU during the current fiscal year (the equivalent of 34 positions worth $6.5 million), the vacancy rate was 19% for 66 SEIU positions, the equivalent of $12.6 million.
“Having less staff with more work causes high workloads, accelerated pace, increased errors or mistakes and makes it tougher to get the work done because you are only handling the most urgent cases instead of everything at the correct pace,” Tisdale said.
Branaman said vacancies in specific positions, such as those handling business licenses, accountants or code enforcement officers, hurt the city’s ability to generate revenue.
“Nineteen percent is unsustainable,” Tisdale said. “This is a hiring issue and not a performance issue.”
Police department says only 106 of its staff members respond to calls
Sgt. Ben Therriault, president of the Richmond Police Officers Association, addressed the vacancies in a department that has seen its number of sworn officers steadily decline from 164 in 2020 to 129.
There are 147 authorized, sworn positions budgeted for the police department, according to city data. Therriault said that of the 129 filled positions, 106 are non-management officers and sergeants that respond to service calls.
The decrease, part of a national trend, can be tied to the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In the aftermath, cities nationwide began deemphasizing traditional forms of public safety while fewer people applied to become police officers.
“Often people talk about numbers. ‘Authorized’ (to work) is not adequate and ‘filled’ (position) is not necessarily on the street,” Therriault said, saying the department would like to have 187 officers.
Therriault cited city reports from Matrix and Raftalis as well as the Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury report, which called for additional officers as the standard. Hiring officers, Therriault said, would help the “social value” of the city.
“When people believe that there is not a fear of crime and things are going to happen to them, things get built, the economy for residents gets better and the built environment gets better,” he said.
City manager: Council should stop adding new positions and new projects
District 6 council member Claudia Jimenez asked Curl to clarify her June 9 statement that the city can’t hire new employees without retirements. Curl said that once the police contracts are approved, the city can afford 670 positions, an increase from the 581 it was at in 2021.
“We have hired a net increase of 92 (positions),” Curl said, referring to her tenure as city manager. “Although the vacancy rate has increased, it has increased because we have added a bunch of new positions over the past four years.”
Curl said money that had been earmarked for positions was spent on projects such as the $34 million Main Library renovation, streets projects and park renovations — all council priorities.
“What do we do then to increase our capacity to hire people?” District 5 council member Sue Wilson asked Curl. “I’m just trying to bring in line what we are budgeting with what actually happens on the ground as close as we can get it. If we are budgeting for 714 people in a typical year, I’d like us to actually have the capacity to hire 714 people.”
Curl said the long-term solution is to reevaluate and “evolve” the positions the city is funding, aiming for a workforce of less than 700 budgeted positions. She added that the council should consider the cost of hiring and retention in the Bay Area.
“Can you foresee a future where there is a greater alignment between position control, budget and what we see on the ground?” Wilson asked.
“Yes, if the city council stops requesting staff to add new positions and you decrease the number of key initiatives,” Curl said.
