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positions in the City and requires more time to fill. While every City employee undergoes a background check, the background requirements for police officers and dispatchers are more onerous. Additionally, police officer classifications require the completion of psychological, polygraph and medical exams, while dispatchers complete a psychological exam. The hiring process for both positions generally takes between three to four months from post-interview to final offer letter. Law enforcement agencies regionally, statewide and nationally are challenged with officer recruitment and retention — fewer applicants are applying, and more people are leaving the profession prior to retirement. The Police Department is not immune from this trend as the department has seen fewer people responding to job postings and current officers moving to other police departments or leaving profession entirely. As an example, in the last two years two officers left the profession to move out of state, another resigned to run a family business, and two left the Police Department to continue their policing careers in cities within Placer County. While medical and service retirements are a normal part of personnel management, the trend of officers leaving the profession prior to retirement or pursing a policing career in other cities is new to the Pleasanton Police Department likely a new on-going trend as a result of increased Bay Area housing prices, a change in generational priorities, and the new California retirement formula. The reduced pool of applicants and unexpected departures created seven vacant officer positions earlier this year. The impact of vacancies was compounded by an additional eight officers unable to work their assigned duties as a result of injuries. Presently, the department has four vacant officer positions and has seven officers out on injury. The combination of vacant positions and those unable to work necessitated an emergency staffing schedule during the busy summer months and extensive over-time to cover patrol shifts and special events. While the recent addition of five new officers has eliminated the need for the emergency patrol schedule and allowed for better contingency planning for unanticipated vacancies, extensive over-time for patrol and special events is still occurring. The reduced number of applicants has led to a highly competitive recruitment landscape among police agencies in the greater Bay Area for both entry-level and tenured officers. The Police Department has taken some proactive steps to aid in the recruitment of officers to include increasing the capacity of background investigators, assigning a dedicated recruitment officer, and re-instatement of the recruitment team to attend recruitment events. Staff anticipates using additional recruitment strategies including directed efforts to attract members of under-represented groups and an increased profile on Linkedln and other professional networking platforms to increase the number of applicants. In addition to strengthening recruitment, staff also plans to over-hire for officer and dispatcher positions as well as using recently retired officers to help bridge the gap between training and filling a position on patrol. While significant progress has been made to fill current vacancies by hiring eight new officers in the past 12 months, the recruitment landscape remains challenging. In the Page 5 of 6