Department of Parks and Recreation Director Laura Thielen told the Committee on Budget that the department substantially improved its hiring metrics, moving from the slowest to the fastest hiring department across six measures in FY24 and hiring 116 people that year. Thielen said the department hired 85 people in the first six months of FY25 and reduced average time-to-hire from 49 days to about 41 days.

"We moved from being the worst department at hiring on all 6 measures, to the number 1 hiring department in the entire city," Thielen said, describing outreach including job fairs, social media, Work Hawaii partnerships and targeted training to meet minimum qualifications.

Thielen told members the department had 194 vacant positions as of Feb. 1 and that most vacancies (over 180) had been open less than three years; positions vacant longer were typically tied to reorganizations. Committee members asked for details on positions vacant more than five years and whether some long-held vacancies should be deleted or reorganized.

Members pressed on maintenance and community partnerships. Thielen said DPR runs an Adopt A Park program with a single full-time civil-service coordinator who manages more than 100 adopt-a-park groups and nearly 190 other community groups. The department previously had an ARPA-funded contract position to assist and the council converted that to general funds; Thielen said the contract-level pay made it difficult to recruit and recommended converting the role to a civil-service position to improve stability.

On mowing and field maintenance, Thielen said the department is formalizing mowing schedules, expanding preventive maintenance on equipment, and identifying high-use parks to prioritize when equipment failures or illness reduce capacity. She warned against uncoordinated volunteer field work: "We have a lot of well-intentioned people that will go out to fields and do things that actually create a lot of damage," and said the department will standardize agreements to allow safe community assistance.

Permitting drew council scrutiny. Thielen said the department now posts issued park calendars online so the public can see daily permit activity for each park; the posted calendar does not show pending requests still under review. On field-user allocation, she recommended convening applicants together in regional field-user meetings so user groups negotiate schedules directly.

Why it matters: Hiring and vacancy levels affect park operations and program delivery. Permit transparency and standardized volunteer agreements affect fairness for youth sports, community groups and park users.