Authorizing the creation of a "Special Committee on Retention and Recruitment of Municipal Workers" to analyze and recommend ways to modernize the City's hiring procedures; recommend strategies to retain current City workers; and recruit new workers by, to the greatest extent possible, hiring City residents.

WHEREAS, Philadelphia is facing staffing shortages across departments, with particularly concerning shortages in public safety departments like Prisons and Police; and

WHEREAS, The City has made efforts to increase recruitment for these two departments by working through the arbitration process on bonuses and other incentives for current workers and new hires. Still, the City of Philadelphia is increasingly noncompetitive with the private sector and other municipalities on both incentive and compensation packages, particularly for public safety professionals; and

WHEREAS, Changes are needed to Civil Service guidelines to allow a more flexible approach to filling vacancies and retaining talent in key positions in many City Departments including, most critically, Police and Prisons; and

WHEREAS, Even when the City can find qualified candidates, new police recruits must still go through state-mandated training. So, assuming each police cadet cohort is as large as the most recent cohort of 72, with 3 cohorts graduating each year, it will take three years to train enough recruits to bring the Police Department up to its authorized staffing level of 6,522; and

WHEREAS, The Department of Prisons currently has 858 unfilled positions and has only graduated about 100 new correctional officers per year. At this rate, it could take about 9 years to train enough recruits to make up for the current shortfall; and

WHEREAS, Across all City Departments there are currently about 4,000 unfilled positions, and about 20,000 city-resident applicants for those jobs. Nevertheless, these positions go unfilled because the City’s hiring procedures are inadequate to accommodate rapid onboarding of new hires; and

WHEREAS, A focused analysis of the City’s hiring practices, policies and procedures, with recommendations on how best to retain and recruit City workers, is critically important to making the City safe and delivering municipal services; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That Council hereby authorizes the creation of a “Special Committee on Retention and Recruitment of Municipal Workers” to analyze and recommend ways to modernize the City’s hiring procedures; recommend strategies to retain current City workers; and recruit new workers by, to the greatest extent possible, hiring City residents.

FURTHER RESOLVED, That in furtherance of these goals, the Special Committee’s duties shall include, but not be confined to: convening regular meetings for planning and coordination purposes; tracking the City’s progress towards the implementation of City efforts to recruit and retain workers; examining the efficacy of current programs and policies; identifying regional and national best practices; and holding public hearings to obtain public input.

FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Special Committee shall submit a full report to the Council and the Mayor and make its findings and recommendations available to the public.

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