In the midst of City College’s hiring freeze, the College Planning Council was presented Tuesday with a ranked list of new and replacement faculty and staff positions that need to be filled.

The committee that created this list is known as the Classified Staff Hiring Subcommittee as part of the Workforce Reduction Attrition Plan, or WRAP. Their primary goal is to help reduce the college’s deficit by not replacing positions once they become vacant. They initially aimed for saving $1.3 million via this plan, and as of last fall semester $1 million has already been saved. The new goal being presented to the council is to save the remaining $300,000.

The only position on the list of nineteen that has been approved so far is the position of Interim Executive Vice President, which is ranked as the number one priority because the current Executive Vice President Paul Jarrell will be leaving City College after June 1.

The other positions ranked highly on the list that are still waiting approval are custodial positions. Additional custodians are being ranked as third and fourth priorities, and then again as eleventh and thirteenth.

“We felt that with the new building being open, we need to build up our custodial pool to meet the demand from that new facility,” said Kenley Neufeld, a member of both the College Planning Council and the WRAP Committee.

The rest of the council appeared to agree with this statement with head nods, and Superintendent-President Anthony Beebe chimed in as well.

“This is a 40,000 square foot building,” Beebe said. “We have been attempting to absorb that into our existing custodial staff and it’s been very difficult. I think it’s really important if we want to keep that building in good condition to hire help for our current custodial staff.”

Lyndsay Maas, Vice President of Business Services, made a recommendation to the council to not make any decisions on approving the rest of the hires until the Governor’s May 15 budget revision comes out.

“The timing of this has worked out very well,” Maas said. “If we waited until we have a good tentative budget in the middle of May, we could make much more educated decisions and maybe even find a new position or two.”

The council agreed with Maas, deciding that it will choose which positions on the list will be filled after the May budget revision.