Chair Krishnan on ideal headcount of 585 vs current 275
Krishnan asks about ideal headcount. Shahada describes a prior planning exercise projecting 585 DOI-funded positions as optimal—412 investigative, 98 operations, 48 executive and training. She notes current headcount is roughly half that level, and if new needs are approved, DOI would reach 318 funded positions plus 142 on-loan for a total of 460.
And so we're looking at right now a headcount of 275 down from 365 before.
What do you believe would be the appropriate headcount and budget needed for your organization to run seamlessly?
Well, to run seamlessly, look, I'm happy to talk a little bit about
a process that the agency underwent under the prior commissioner, where we really, as part of the work
to provide a proposal to the commission to strengthen local democracy on the charter revision proposals,
That included a minimum budget for DOI, and as part of that process, DOI went through a planning exercise to estimate an optimal staffing level for the department, going unit by unit to project an ideal staffing number.
And the projected ideal for investigative staff was 412 positions,
for operations staff, 98 positions, and executive and training staff, 48 positions, which would bring the total DOI-funded headcount to 585.
I'm not expecting in this budget landscape that that is something that we could realistically expect.
Again, I'm focused now on stabilization.
And if our new needs request is approved for the adopted budget, our core headcount on DOI-funded lines would be 318 DOI-funded positions.
We have, if we factor in 142 on-loan personnel from paid for by other city,
agencies, then our total budgeted headcount would be 460 if our new needs request is accepted.
And it seems to me, wouldn't you agree that right now the current headcount at DOI is give or take about half of
where you all would want to be ideally, 265 versus the 580 that you indicated.
It seems like we're, given all these cuts over the years, about halfway from what you would fully need in an ideal level to fully fund the agency.
Yes, probably.
Would you agree with that?