{"id":39105,"date":"2025-01-28T13:33:05","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T21:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=39105"},"modified":"2025-01-28T13:37:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T21:37:45","slug":"san-franciscos-citywide-hiring-freeze-is-neither-citywide-nor-a-hiring-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/01\/28\/san-franciscos-citywide-hiring-freeze-is-neither-citywide-nor-a-hiring-freeze\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco\u2019s citywide hiring freeze is neither citywide, nor a hiring freeze"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Departments that don\u2019t draw from the city\u2019s general fund are included in plans to tackle the massive general fund deficit. But why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A by JOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/strong> JANUARY 27, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Illustration by Kelly Waldron<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Are you a regular Joe Eskenazi reader?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Mission Local is home to San Francisco\u2019s premier political reporter<\/strong>, serving up analysis you can\u2019t get elsewhere. If you agree, help feed the city\u2019s news appetite \u2014 donate below<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donate today!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco\u2019s beleaguered parents of teens \u2014 is there any other kind? \u2014 received a strange and terrible message from the city on Thursday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applicants for Recreation and Parks Department summer jobs for young people were notified that they\u2019d have to wait indefinitely to sign up for internships or counselor positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were supposed to release the application this week but, due to the city\u2019s hiring freeze for city employees, we do not have a release date,\u201d read the email. \u201cAt this time, the application is on hold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great news, kids! You can go back to playing \u201cStardew Valley\u201d on your phones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mission<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter<\/strong> below.Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not for long (sorry, kids): By Friday, Rec and Parks was hiring<\/a> for summer camps and Camp Mather, after the positions were \u201cunfrozen\u201d by the mayor\u2019s office following a review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unlikely that anyone involved in Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s citywide hiring freeze envisioned that it would block the city from hiring teens to populate San Francisco\u2019s yearly reenactment of \u201cWet Hot American Summer\u201d until the mayor\u2019s office gave the official green light. But that happened. And you can expect more hiccups, because the citywide hiring freeze is neither citywide, nor a hiring freeze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for \u201ccitywide,\u201d the exceptions<\/a> are broad enough to drive a 1992 Ford Crown Victoria<\/a> through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Illustrated
Elusive good news: San Francisco will re-enact \u201cWet Hot American Summer\u201d again this year<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Also, nomenclature aside, it\u2019s not really a \u201cfreeze.\u201d But here\u2019s the thing: San Francisco \u201chiring freezes\u201d never really are<\/em>. As the parents of future camp counselors learned, it\u2019s not so much about ceasing hiring altogether, but more about the mayor\u2019s office asserting the need to gatekeep and explicitly approve individual hiring. Like \u201csour cream\u201d or \u201cDefund the Police,\u201d it turns out that \u201chiring freeze\u201d is not great branding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mayor\u2019s move, conceptually, makes sense: The city\u2019s economic health<\/a> is precarious. It brings back memories of former Oakland Raider Jim Otto\u2019s Burger King in Auburn, which displayed a diagram of his football injuries<\/a> \u2014 which, like San Francisco\u2019s fiscal maladies, were debilitating, myriad and legion. Some manner of hiring slowdown is surely warranted, and would\u2019ve been issued by any<\/em> San Francisco mayor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mr.<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But the devil is in the details. That\u2019s why a move to curtail an $876 million general fund deficit resulted in parents getting emails about teen counselor jobs. But that is not all. Oh no, that is not all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the vast Public Utilities Commission, which brings water and power to this and other cities, and pipes away and treats your sewage, Mission Local<\/em> has learned that the hiring freeze abruptly curtailed the filling of some 300 positions<\/em>, a situation involving literally thousands of potential applicants. The hiring process for these scads of would-be PUC employees, many of whom have been navigating the slings and arrows of San Francisco\u2019s arduous onboarding process for months already, was canceled in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the parents who had to wait not quite 24 hours before applying to get their teens off \u201cStardew Valley\u201d and out of the house, scenarios like those at the PUC and other non-summer-camp positions may not be resolved quickly, or well. This is not a great way for the city to impress potential hires, many of whom are highly specialized and could pick and choose to work for a less capricious employer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco\u2019s hiring process was already<\/em> unnecessarily onerous and arbitrary, leading to the best candidates being poached while the city made them cool their heels, or bypassing applying here altogether. Regardless of the city\u2019s needs or intentions, this added to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jennifer<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s unfortunate. In the abstract, it\u2019s good and reasonable that the city\u2019s newly elected mayor, in a fiscal crisis, is applying extra scrutiny before adding to the enormous workforce. In the concrete, however, an imperfectly planned or enacted \u201chiring freeze\u201d can actually reinforce the city\u2019s sclerotic and Kafkaesque inefficiencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this area, unlike the budget, San Francisco is running a surplus.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Brian Henderson of the city\u2019s Public Utilities Commission talks with his crew in front of temporary flood barriers on the corner of 17th and Folsom streets in December 2016. Photo by Brian Rinker.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Depending upon how closely you follow city government \u2014 or if you\u2019re a part of it \u2014 you may have already noticed an incongruity here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The $876 million gap is a general fund deficit. But the PUC \u2014 or, for that matter, the port, the airport, and others \u2014 are not general fund departments<\/em>. They are, rather, enterprise departments<\/em>. To varying degrees, they do not receive much, if any, money from the city\u2019s general fund (the PUC and airport receive none; the airport actually pays into<\/em> the general fund). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"DPH<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Enterprise departments generate their own money. The PUC pays for capital improvements via bonding and, of course, also receives your monthly payments. The airport charges the airlines landing fees, and also charges you $5 for a goddamn granola bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, they hire a lot of people and those people earn money. But, crucially, any savings generated by slowing down or curtailing hiring at the airport or PUC will not do much, if anything, to reduce that yawning general-fund deficit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, staffers at the enterprise departments are confused. For all the problems San Francisco has, the toilets flush and the taps work. If revitalizing downtown and tourism is a goal of the new administration, and it is, why make trouble for the airport? For lack of a better word, our airport airports. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As applied, the hiring freeze has pulled the rug out from under these departments, nixed months of internal toil filling vacancies, and necessitated more work for human resources to try \u2014 to try \u2014 <\/em>to sweet-talk affected job candidates into trusting the process. And for what? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Guide\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Daniel Lurie walks through the crowd gathered for his inauguration on Jan. 8, 2025. Photo by Abigail Van Neely.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mission Local <\/em>obtained the notes for Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s Jan. 9 meeting with city department heads<\/a>, breaking the news of the hiring freeze. In them, he explicitly stated that \u201cthis includes non-General Fund departments.\u201d So, this was no boating accident. It was a deliberate decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But why? Why convolute the already convoluted hiring process for departments \u2014 departments that don\u2019t factor into the general fund deficit the city is toiling to address? The answer appears to be tucked into those Jan. 9 notes<\/a>, when Lurie tells department heads that the mayor\u2019s office \u201cwill manage towards ensuring effective delivery of core government services.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words: Every<\/em> department should be prepared to show its work on how its hiring plans and expenditures translate into fulfilling its duties. This is, as noted above, about applying scrutiny, at the mayor\u2019s insistence.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, fair enough. You could argue that this was executed in a manner that has led to unnecessary problems. You could further argue that the hiring specialists in specialized departments know more about specialized hiring in specialized departments than anyone in the mayor\u2019s office. It\u2019s not hard to find people throughout the city to tell you these things.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the mayor is asserting himself here. He\u2019s entitled to: He is, after all, the one we voted for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
San Francisco Public Works\u2019 Ollie Bradshaw on Folsom Street. Photo by Yujie Zhou.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rest assured, smart people put in time and effort on this hiring-freeze plan. A hiring freeze of some sort was necessary. It\u2019s hard to argue, however, that this was implemented optimally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, there were headlines generated by a broad and confident and sudden hiring freeze, and the gravitas of the city\u2019s problems was emphasized. That\u2019s important, but a more gradual and nuanced approach would have spared many of the unintended consequences that will add even more time to San Francisco\u2019s already marathon hiring process and may well drive qualified candidates away from the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mayor\u2019s office is now calling for departments to submit justifications for future hires. Seems reasonable. But why did it have to do that and <\/em>cancel all the employment candidates in the pipeline? Couldn\u2019t it have asked for justifications for the in-process hires and weeded out any extraneous ones, instead of curtailing a months-long process affecting thousands of potential candidates \u2014 and, again, alienating the job-seekers who deigned to put up with us in the first place? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s likely the departments and the mayor\u2019s office will, eventually, hammer out parameters for a hiring slowdown that make sense. But it\u2019s unfortunate such a step would come post-facto. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, looming over it all is that, by the time things are worked out, the city may find itself confronted by new, less appealing realities. Six months down the road, the situation San Francisco is facing could well make the present resemble a walk in the woods.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey, just in time for summer camp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Support the Mission Local team<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We’re a small, independent, nonprofit newsroom<\/strong> that works hard to bring you news you can’t get elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

getbackjoejoe@gmail.com<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Managing Editor\/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour humble narrator\u201d was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Departments that don\u2019t draw from the city\u2019s general fund are included in plans to tackle the massive general fund deficit. But why? by JOE ESKENAZI JANUARY 27, 2025 (MissionLocal.org) Are you a regular Joe Eskenazi reader? Mission Local is home to San Francisco\u2019s premier political reporter, serving up analysis you can\u2019t get… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39105"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39107,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39105\/revisions\/39107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}