Opinion: Stead: Personnel drought leads to a closed dump and more

The dump was closed last Sunday.

Between the federal holiday and low staff levels, they were closed from Saturday to Wednesday. That is pretty extreme for June, but without anyone to work there, they have had to continue with the winter hours. There has been quite a bit of grousing about this, but to his credit, the Department of Public Works director firmly says that his employees deserve two days off in a week, and those are guns he should stick to. 

This isn’t only them. One of the golf courses had to close one day a week as they couldn’t hire anyone to do as elementary a job as hand out the golf cards and collect the fees. More challenging and well-paid jobs also languish. And the same thing is happening in most of the towns. In Harwich, a half-dozen full-time department head jobs are also empty.

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According to Ryan Bray at the Cape Cod Chronicle, the Nauset and Skaket beaches in Orleans have been able to avoid some of these problems. In Orleans, the town owns housing for its lifeguards. At a time where available housing is in short supply locally and regionally, especially during the summer months, Tom Daley (of the Orleans DPW) said having the housing has helped safeguard Orleans from the types of staff shortages other towns are facing this season.

We’ve seen this kind of arrangement for a while in the restaurant industry, notably at the Barley Neck Inn in Orleans. But with COVID-19 concerns, one of the backbones of our summer staffing economy — the J-1 visa workers from Ireland, Bulgaria and other countries — went away as well. Now, the workers can come back but in the insanely tight housing market, there aren’t many places to stay. That scarcity goes way beyond the staff in the restaurant and service sectors.

The seasonal jobs, like lifeguards or recreation department staff, have been difficult to fill for a while, but are as important to our economy as are those J-1 workers. The real surprise is the vacancies in the sort of municipal administrative jobs that you used to have to knock on a door and whisper — Joe sent me! — in order to get. Family and friends of those in town hall were usually the first to be considered. These jobs had excellent health insurance, benefits usually at a much lower cost than the private sector, and once vested you were entitled to a lifetime pension with annual 3% raises for life. The losses in full-time staff hired for these posts are generally attributed to long commutes and an inability to find a place to live near the work.

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Have we really gotten to the point where we might need dormitory-style housing for municipal workers?

There may be solutions short of something so drastic. At this point in the pandemic, a lot of the houses bought by investors may be available. As inflation and gas prices get worse, properties rented by-the-week for vacation spots may begin to see some affordability gaps. And because homeowners always face the risk of damage and abutter complaints about noise It might be possible for a municipality to lease such houses on behalf of staff as a benefit provided.

Like so many other categories of employment, government services are experiencing a personnel drought. But our rapidly rising median age tells us that even among full-time residents, there are fewer and fewer people who have come here to work as well as to live. And while retirees and visitors all need people to live here and work in order to keep the wheels on the bus going 'round and 'round, there needs to be a place for them to stay. Or it won’t be only the dump that is closed.   

Cynthia Stead is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times and can be contacted at cestead@gmail.com.