Santa Barbara may be an attractive place to live, but the city government is having trouble filling vacant positions within its various departments. The vacancy rate rose to nearly 10 percent during February 2024, according to a recent report presented to the City Council on Tuesday, April 15, by Labor Relations Manager Sam Ramirez.
The City of Santa Barbara has 1,098 budgeted full-time equivalent positions, with eight unions representing workers in public safety, community programs, and general operations. In total, the city filled 207 job vacancies last year, with around half of those (51 percent) being new hires and the remainder coming from within the city employees. At the same time, there were 166 vacancies created, with 77 due to internal promotions and 27 coming through retirement. Eight city employees “involuntarily” lost their jobs, and 52 more decided to leave on their own.
Last year, there were up to 100 vacancies during any given month, with the city reporting 75 remaining unfilled positions by December 2024. The Police Officer’s Association (POA) reported the highest vacancy rate, with 20 positions unfilled out of 182 budgeted positions, representing a rate of nearly 11 percent.
POA representative and Santa Barbara Police Department (SBPD) Detective Adam Mik spoke to the councilmembers that from 2022 to 2024, the department hired 41 officers and lost 36 of them.
“The department continues to lose officers to retirement, lateral transfers, and people leaving the profession altogether,” Mik said. “Recruiting continues to be a challenge, and we’re barely hiring enough officers to offset the ones we’re losing…. Just in the last 30 days, we’ve lost four seasoned officers to a nearby agency in Ventura County.”
He credited Police Chief Kelly Gordon for working to address these issues by pursuing a bonus for new hires, but said there was more work to be done to remain competitive with other agencies that pay “the same and often higher” than SBPD. “We’re not keeping up,” he said.
SEIU Local 620 represents the largest contingent of city workers, with 589 budgeted positions between its two units. Union reps said there were still 37 vacant positions in the Local 620, some that have remained unfilled for months. In some cases, these prolonged vacancies left existing employees picking up heavier workloads.
The union reps urged City Council to ensure salaries are competitive, with cost-of-living adjustments attuned to the actual cost of living in Santa Barbara.
No action was taken, but the city will continue to review its hiring procedures to improve the recruiting process by increasing outreach for job openings or partnering with community groups or educational institutions to fill vacant positions.
