Vallejo’s staffing trouble continues as new HR director seeks solutions

VALLEJO – Vallejo’s human resources director reported that she is trying to address ongoing staffing shortages through rebranding the city’s work culture, but another department head said that low pay is hurting their ability to recruit.

Human Resources Director Stephanie Sinfuentes presented the latest city staffing numbers at Tuesday’s City Council meeting that show the number of  overall vacant positions changed little from the 28 percent citywide vacancy rate reported in June. 

The city began to see an increase in employee departures in 2021 and the HR department struggled to fill the empty positions. In 2022, the city’s vacancy rate shot up to 29% from a 17% rate in 2021.

The police department has the city’s largest staff with 191 funded positions and 72 unfilled, a 37% vacancy rate. The water department has the second largest staff with 121 funded positions and 41 unfilled for a vacancy rate of 34%. The city’s third largest staff is the fire department with 96 funded positions and 11 vacancies, a rate of 12%. 

Some smaller departments like the housing and the planning departments also have high vacancy rates. The planning department has the city’s highest vacancy of 46% with 35 funded positions and 16 vacancies.

Planning director Christina Ratcliffe said that her department’s problem is low salaries. “Across the board Vallejo just doesn’t pay comparable to other cities, that’s what we are hearing from applicants,” she said.

Ratcliffe said that the department recently offered a position to a code enforcement officer but they turned it down because of low pay. “People have to support their families, I completely understand that,” Ratcliffe said. 

To address the problem, Ratcliffe proposed a study of regional salaries to ensure that the department is offering competitive compensation and that they can secure the revenue needed to increase salaries without deterring development.

Councilmembers Peter Bregenzer and Charles Palmares both supported the salary study. Palmares said that the city needs to do whatever it takes to get staffing levels up to the point where new hires don’t leave as soon as they see the workload that employees face in the understaffed departments.

Sifuentes had served as the city’s assistant human resources director until she left to become a HR manager for Solano County but returned to the city  this summer. Councilmembers and interim police chief Jason Ta have praised her work to ramp up recruiting for the severely understaffed police department. 

Although the hiring process at the police department is slow in part because of the lengthy background checks, Sifuentes has been able to increase the number of applicants for open positions in the first few months since she returned, she and Ta told the council.

At Tuesday's meeting, Sifuentes emphasized the need to rebrand Vallejo by providing positive experiences early on in the recruiting and interview process and making sure new employees are well supported from the day they begin work. 

One of the city’s untapped opportunities to attract new hires, according to Sifuentes, is promoting the positive community impacts of each open position with the city of Vallejo. “We need to be making those connections for people because in order for people to really and truly do well at a job it is important for them to have that passion.”

Councilmember Diosdado “J.R. Matulac said that he appreciates the work that Sifuentes is doing to promote positive aspects of Vallejo’s work culture but he also suggested assessing some of the longstanding vacancies to determine what positions are actually necessary.

Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz brought up image concerns that arose from employees publicly posting their grievances about working for the city of Vallejo. “When we have our own folks tearing down the city, what can be done?” she said. “That defeats the purpose, if five of us are saying ‘Yay Vallejo’ and you’ve got one, two or another five saying, ‘No, don’t come here.’”

City Attorney Veronica Nebb said employees or organizations are free to say what they want on their own time with their own resources. Nebb added that there have been instances where the HR and the city attorney’s office investigated the use of city time or resources for personal critiques of Vallejo as a workplace.