The town of Coupeville has no job vacancies for the first time in months.

After an atypical struggle to fill the positions, the town has hired a new building official, filled its public works and utilities crews and selected a person to fill a newly created assistant planner position.

“We’re pretty excited about everybody that we hired,” said Coupeville Mayor Molly Hughes in a July 13 town council meeting. “It’s not like we settled. We’re really happy with everyone that’s come aboard.”

Taking over as Coupeville building official is Scott Austin, an Oregonian slated to begin in September. Hughes said this position was posted for four months.

The job was listed originally as a part-time position because the town doesn’t have enough work for a full-time official, but this limited the number of people interested in the job, Hughes said. Langley, however, was also looking for a part-time building official, so the two municipalities teamed up to make one full-time hire.

Austin will work three days a week in Coupeville and the other two days in Langley.

Coupeville also added an assistant planner position to help lighten the load in the town’s swamped planning department. This position, too, was posted for an unusually long time, Hughes said.

The town received very few applications for a long time until experienced county planner Patricia Shults applied. Hughes said the town is thrilled to have her.

Coupeville also hired Mary Macpherson to the utilities crew and Robert Lang and Dominic Peterson to the public works crew, plus Roger Ellefson as a seasonal public works crew member.

These maintenance positions had also been posted for around four months, Hughes said, all while two employees were doing an entire crew’s worth of work during the busy spring and summer months.

Like many other professionals across various industries struggling to find workers in the pandemic aftermath, Hughes said societal upset caused by COVID-19 is to blame for the difficulties the town faced in filling its vacant positions.

“We’ve never had a problem getting applications for our jobs,” Hughes said. “We pay well, we have good benefits, Coupeville is a fun place to work. So I can’t think of any other reason why, unless it’s COVID-related.”

Despite the setback, Hughes said she and other town employees are excited to be running at full capacity again.