Speaker Menin on water ecologist vacancies before outbreak
Menin presses why 21 of 56 authorized water ecologist positions were unfilled heading into summer. Martin clarifies 50 of 56 are now filled with 6 open, and says the majority were filled before the cluster. Menin disputes this based on her data.
In addition, during the outbreak, only 35 of 56 authorized water ecologist positions were staffed.
Heading into the summer months.
So there were 21 authorized positions that the department never staffed with active inspectors.
Let me clarify the record.
on that speaker.
There are 56 total budgeted positions for the water ecologists.
50 of those positions either have people who are on the ground, on the roofs, I was with some of them just a couple weeks ago doing our water inspections, or going through the onboarding process.
You are right.
There are folks who we have not recruited, we have not hired.
We have six open positions, and we are trying to make sure we get the right people for each of those roles.
Those are highly specialized roles.
But the vast majority of these, even the new positions that we got, were filled and had folks either on the ground or on board.
Right, but not before the outbreak occurred.
The point is that...
Why between January and May, heading into the summer months, did the department leave 21 authorized positions of active inspectors open?
That's the point.
Very good that now it's being filled, but our point is that had the department have filled these vacant positions, we would probably not be in this situation that we're in right now.
So that's what I'm trying to get to.
If we could move on.