Why isn’t anyone asking why there are so many vacant key staff positions in Burien’s City Hall?

In these poor economic times, government staff are a dime a dozen because of the amount of reductions that have happened. In Burien, the staff seems to be disappearing for other reasons. Right now there are, at least, six key positions vacant.

What’s making all of these people leave their jobs?

In the last three years, Burien has had three different finance directors. Seems like they barely learn how to read the budget and then they leave.

This kind of staff turnover can’t be good for the workflow or continuity of services in the city.

Maybe when Burien added 14,000 people it should have added more staff—instead of trying to make the annexation of Area X look like such a cheap deal so Mike Martin could sell the annexation of Area Y to the council.

Or maybe it is the same kind of thing that happened to Mr. Martin in San Francisco when he refused to listen to his staff and had morale issues.

Whatever the cause, the council should be asking what’s going on that is causing such frequent staff turnover. Bringing new staff up to speed increases operation costs and reduces productivity.

T. Nguyen
Des Moines