One way that Santa Barbara County government has been dealing with staffing shortages is to bring back retired workers as extra help employees.  

The employees collect pension payments in addition to their extra help wages, according to the Human Resources Department.

The latest request for an extra help service and retirement waiver was from the County Executive Office to bring back Terri Maus-Nisich, an assistant CEO who has worked there for 18 years.

She retired in late March, like many of the other extra help employees this year.  

“The department was aware that Ms. Maus-Nisich was planning to retire and her position was filled accordingly; however, there are multiple critical projects related to transitional homeless housing and coordination that are of high priority to the board that would be best served by her extensive expertise and established relationships that could be disrupted without her critical oversight,” Assistant CEO Barbara Anderson wrote in a staff report to the Board of Supervisors.

Anderson said Maus-Nisich has been volunteering her time during the past 90 days but that there’s more work for her to do, which is why the office is requesting to bring her back as an extra help worker.

The Board of Supervisors approved the request in a 4-0 vote on Tuesday.

“She is one of my most invaluable partners in the project across the street,” Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino said, referring to the Hope Village temporary shelter in Santa Maria near the Betteravia Government Center.

Supervisor Bob Nelson has opposed most of this year’s requests for extra help waivers and abstained from Tuesday’s vote, saying, “In good conscience, there’s no way I could vote against Terri Maus-Nisich. … She is really a true public servant. Her value is really beyond what we can pay her, frankly.”

Maus-Nisich will earn an hourly rate of $117.18 with a total cost not to exceed $112,500.

The Board of Supervisors has approved 13 extra help waivers so far in 2023. There were two last year.  

“The high number of extra help requests this year is uncommon, and the county does not expect this trend to continue,” Human Resources representatives told Noozhawk this week.

Some of the reasons the county hires extra help employees, who are temporary and can work only 960 hours, are to “meet peak workloads, unusual work situations, seasonal and recurrent work, and intermittent assignments, or emergencies.”

County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato said during her budget presentations that recruitment, retention and succession planning are among the challenges. Those requests are one way that it shows.

County departments have anywhere from 5% to 20% vacancy, she told Noozhawk in April. There have been a lot of changes recently at the department head and assistant director level, mostly because of retirements.

One department got an extra help waiver to bring back a budget director who had retired right before the county’s spring budget workshops. Others asked to bring back knowledgeable staff to continue work for ongoing projects.

The extra help workers do not earn benefits like they did when they were full employees, and their extra help time does not count toward their service credit and retirement payments, according to the county and state law regarding such hires.

The Board of Supervisors approved eight extra help waivers at the April 4 meeting, which was unusual.

“I’m disappointed to see so many of these come before the board,” Nelson said at the time. “I think we’re a big organization with a lot of employees, and I think we should be able to adjust to these things.”

Many employees retire at the end of March to get a higher cost-of-living adjustment through the retirement system, Miyasato said, but the number of extra help waivers requested this year is “not the norm.”

She added that some of the employees made retirement decisions “last minute” and didn’t give coworkers enough time to get a replacement recruitment and hiring process started.

Nelson voted against those and every subsequent extra help waiver request until Tuesday, when he abstained from the vote.