Santa Clara is working to address gaps in its procedures regarding city employees.

At its most recent meeting on May 26, the Santa Clara City Council heard two items on the topic: one aimed at addressing understaffing and the other to establish a policy for evaluating the city manager’s and city attorney’s performance.

State law requires the city to provide an annual report on vacancies and address recruitment efforts, said Ashley Lancaster, Interim Human Resources Director. If any department has a vacancy rate above 20%, the law requires city employees to identify obstacles to recruitment and devise a strategy to address the gap.

Since July last year, the city has filled 204 full-time positions, lowering the city’s vacancy rate from 15% to 12%.

Lancaster said the city has made “very significant progress,” but that some roles, such as senior engineers, are difficult to fill. That department’s vacancy rate sits at 22%, the only one in the city with a vacancy rate above 20%.

Barriers to recruitment include civic service rules, department workload, competitiveness of the pool of specialized positions and background time to hire, with such requirements as a polygraph, or psychological test, she said.

Council Member Kevin Park was concerned that the city is struggling to fill vacant positions compared to other cities, given that Santa Clara offers high pay and good benefits.

On a similar note, the council also adopted a policy for evaluating the city manager and city attorney. 

Marco Mercado, Assistant Director of Human Resources, said the policy creates “predictability and transparency.”

“This process has been problematic,” said Council Member Suds Jain. “There has never really been a driver for this process. As a result, we have had very haphazard performance reviews for our employees.”

The process involves an HR facilitator. If the council fails to complete the evaluation before the end of May each year, the employee gets a raise — either 2% or in line with the consumer price index (CPI), whichever is lower.

Park took issue with establishing goals just ahead of the creation of a subcommittee.

“I don’t know how we can do evaluations without knowing what we are evaluating against,” he said. 

Mercado told Park that the policy allows for goal-setting earlier in the process. However, Park said that “can include” is very different from “does include,” adding that he likes knowing “what is going to be done, not what is possible.”

Brian Darby, a public commentor, said he liked that the policy “takes personalities out of the equation,” adding that employee turnover is “disrupting and demoralizing.”

In a rarely seen moment, Mayor Lisa Gillmor sided with Park. The automatic raise stuck in Gillmor’s craw, saying the policy “rewards delay” and “creates different standards.” 

“The purpose of an annual evaluation is to assess performance before giving any sort of compensation, so when a raise occurs automatically, when the evaluation isn’t completed, compensation can increase without a formal review or performance,” she said. “This is just automatic, and it is not based on any performance. This is wrong.”

But Jain said he didn’t see the policy as rewarding delay. Instead, he said, it prevents the council from intentionally delaying an evaluation, forcing its members to “get on the ball.”

The policy passed in a 4-2 vote, with Park and Gillmor dissenting and Council Member Kelly Cox absent.

Contact David Alexander at d.todd.alexander@gmail.com