Dunkirk Mayor Willie Rosas said “the current system is inefficient.” “The personnel director is good at what he does, benefits disbursements, but he is not a human resources director, which we desperately need,” Rosas said. “That’s a problem. We’re the only municipality I know of without an HR department.”
A full-time HR director would make $60,000 annually, plus benefits. One resident at a recent public hearing said the city can’t afford the position and that it is not necessary. She added that the city needed to “rethink it and get more information.”
But Rosas said that it would cost more to contract out HR duties and that a full-time HR director could potentially save the city from costly lawsuits. “I have seen routine incidents and complaints come in daily that are not handled the way they should be, in my opinion,” Rosas said. “We have many big departments and we need an HR director who knows what they’re doing because the city [is] losing out monetarily.”