According to an item buried deep in next Tuesday’s board agenda packet the county is no longer planning to institute a “hiring freeze.” Instead they will call it a “strategic hiring process.” That “process” is supposed to include the following:
“Human Resources will present a monthly agenda item to the Board of Supervisors, which reviews all departmental requests to fill vacant or soon-to-be vacant positions. Each request will include a justification outlining the necessity of the position, any legal or regulatory mandates, and the proposed funding source.”
Given the County’s historic aversion to the production of monthly reports of any kind, we are mentioning this mainly to document that it is part of the “strategic hiring process,” and is supposed to be a key element of the alleged balanced budget for next fiscal year.
The CEO’s budget team assumes that this “process” will magically generate over $6 million in expense reductions over the next fiscal year as employees quit, retire or otherwise leave County employment and are not replaced.
We doubt the County will produce these reports, much less hold the line on not replacing employees who leave. If the monthly reports are produced, the Board will be hard pressed to decide who to replace, not to mention replacing staffers with the proper qualifications and experience.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how this plays out and to see if the County makes good on its plan to produce this monthly report of vacancies for the public and the Board to review, with departments vying against each other for replacement approvals in a low-grade version of Lord of the Flies.
Tracking the vacancies and replacements over the year toward their highly suspicious $6 million salary savings target using this random, scattershot hiring freeze instead of an organized reduction in force or reduction in labor hours is bound to produce needless additional tension and morale problems in the affected departments.
In rough numbers, the General Fund is about $100 million. The County says that they typically have a 6% turnover rate each year. Assuming that, on average, salary and benefits from vacated positions is about $100k per position, that’s the equivalent of 60 positions vacated for an entire year.
However, since those positions will not suddenly all go vacant on July 1, but will occur over the year, that translates to more like 120 General Fund positions that would have to be vacated and not replaced over the July 1, 2025 - June 30, 2026 time period.
The majority of the County’s roughly 1200 employees are not funded out of the General Fund, but with state and federal grants and other programs. So again, in rough conservative terms the County would have to have 120 people leave and not be replaced out of, say, half of the 1200 positions, or 600 General Fund positions, to get anything like $6 million in salary savings. Further, most of the General Fund positions are in law enforcement which the Board so far has been unwilling to cut or leave vacant. That leaves maybe 300 positions out of which they expect 120 people to leave and not be replaced.
Of course these estimates are only for perspective — the actual numbers will vary.
In 2010 when a similar size budget gap had to be addressed, the County decided to reduce office hours and employee hours and postpone raises rather than cut staff or salaries. They also instituted a hiring freeze, but not on the scale now being planned for, It wasn’t popular, but it kept most staff on board.
Cutting staff and office hours alone would not achieve anything like a $6 million in savings. But, if done in combination with a more well-planned hiring freeze, it would at least leave most County General Fund departments with intact staffs. Most General Fund departments have fairly small staffs where each departure is a major hit to productivity. Leaving them with random vacancies based on who leaves voluntarily seems like the worst possible way to reduce staffing.
Add to this the stupid idea of putting position replacement requests before the Board every month in a sort of vacancy olympics. The “strategic hiring process” thus becomes nothing more than a random first-come first-serve replacement approach which will generate even more staff chaos than at present. Not to mention the months-long delays involved in hiring qualified replacements.
Notice also that this “strategic hiring process” conveniently exempts any targeted reductions of management positions or salaries where the most savings can be generated for the fewest vacancies with the least impact on actual line work.
Essentially, the Board and the CEO are declaring that they are helplessly incapable of deciding which positions to cut, letting employees passively and randomly decide individually. But on the other end, they believe they are somehow uniquely positioned to decide which positions should be replaced.
As we have said before, Mendo’s thoughtless approach to budget balancing, no matter what fancy name they may give it, makes Elon Musk’s widely criticized DOGE chainsaw operation look downright sensible.
Sounds like a Big, Beautiful Proposal.
Rock, meet hard place. Social Services, Behavioral Health and Public Health are mostly not funded with General Fund money, and provide vital services. So which departments are? Tax Collector and Assessor bring in money, so cutting staff there wouldn’t be wise. Limiting the number of deputies in the Sheriff’s department is not a good idea either. Cutting transportation staff will result in unsafe roads. I don’t want to see anyone laid off.
The Executive Office is funded from the General Fund. Do we need as many employees there? How about if the CEO took a temporary salary reduction as a good faith gesture? The Supervisors? How about not giving away a big portion of the inland tax base to the City of Ukiah? The County has properties that could be rented out for private parties and other venues, are they advertising that? Hold a bake sale? There must be creative ways the County can leverage it’s assets….