Cobb Reporter

Cobb County is seeking help as local leaders say the number of job vacancies has reached critical levels. 

County spokesperson Ross Cavitt said everyone in the county government is having trouble hiring.

“Parks is having a difficult time opening some of their summer facilities, the water department is having trouble staffing their crews that repair water mains and staff the water treatment centers," Cavitt told FOX 5 Atlanta recently.

The Cobb Department of Transportation (DOT) is one of the agencies being hit the hardest, the report said. DOT Director Drew Raessler noted that the areas of road maintenance, traffic signals, and signing and marking have vacancy rates as high as 40%.

The road maintenance department currently has 65 instead of 100 employees taking care of 2400 miles of road. With this, Raessler admitted that shorthanded staffing has now resulted in prioritizing safety issues in the tasks performed. 

Moving forward, Raessler told FOX 5 that he plans to ask the Board of Commissioners to use $1 million from the contingency fund to hire private contractors to help with the work. Some departments are also pushing to use federal relief funds for $1,500 retention incentives to keep current employees from leaving.