A City Understaffed

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Thank you to this week’s sponsor the North Carolina Museum of Art: Experience two not-to-miss exhibitions, Venice and the Ottoman Empire and Samurai: The Making of a Warrior, at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Open now through January 5, 2025, explore works of art and culture spanning six centuries across three global empires, including salvaged shipwreck objects from a Venetian merchant ship to samurai arms and armor from an exceptional private collection.

Good morning, readers.

The City of Durham has 459 empty positions across its departments, according to data released to the INDY—data that took so long to obtain that the reporter who originally requested it in October 2023, Cy Neff, has since left Durham for a job covering Wyoming politics at USA Today. (Props to Neff for seeing this story through from a time zone away, including re-filing his request this August when the original went nowhere.)

The numbers, dated to September 1, 2024, show that Durham’s Emergency Communications department is hurting the most, with a third of its 80 positions unfilled.

The police department isn’t faring much better, with nearly 200 vacant positions. That’s about 30 percent of the force, a stat that’s drawn scrutiny and led to recent pay raises for officers. 

Meanwhile, Durham’s community safety program, HEART, is nearly fully staffed, with just two vacancies out of 47 positions. And some larger departments are managing to keep their numbers up—Solid Waste has seven vacancies out of 120 positions, while Parks and Recreation has 10 openings across 136 slots.

Mayor Leonardo Williams says there are fewer vacancies currently than in years past, citing factors like the pandemic and the “Defund the Police movement” for previous staffing woes. When the INDY tried to verify this claim, the city told us those historical numbers were unavailable.

Have a good Wednesday.

—Lena

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