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Hobbs budget includes 3% COLA; staff count trimmed in FY26 preliminary plan
Summary
Finance staff presented the salary, benefits and FTE assumptions for FY 2026: a 3% cost‑of‑living adjustment, a small PERA increase, a flat health insurance assumption, and a reduction in budgeted FTEs compared with FY 2025.
Assistant Deb Corral and CFO Toby Spears gave the commission a detailed look at salary and benefits assumptions in the FY 2026 preliminary budget, highlighting a modest pay increase, benefit changes and lower budgeted headcount.
"You'll see the entire $59,000,000 on that page," Assistant Deb Corral said, referring to the all‑funds salary and benefits total that staff included in the book. "The assumptions that got us there were a 3% COLA built into the budget. And in addition to that, there were approximately 10 positions, 9.75, removed from the budget, as well as 24.3 seasonal equivalents, removed from the budget."
Staff said total salary and benefits across all funds is about $59,900,000 for FY 2026 versus $59.2 million in FY 2025. The FTE count on the budget pages fell from 626 in FY 2025 to about 592 in FY 2026 based on the staffing changes included in the preliminary submission. Staff also described benefit assumptions: health insurance was left flat for the budget, PERA (Pension) employer rates were assumed to rise by roughly 0.5 percentage point, and the city retains contribution caps and pay differentials (examples cited included CDL pay up to $6,000 and bilingual stipend opportunities).
Commissioners asked for department‑level three‑year trends (the budget book contains those pages) and for clarifications about which vacant positions were removed. City Manager Manny Gomez later said the administration has removed roughly 100 vacant positions from budgets over his tenure and reported about 90 current vacancies across the organization; he emphasized the need to analyze appropriate staffing levels by department.
Staff noted the budget also includes programmatic pay elements and existing PTO/leave structure; several compensation elements apply to legacy employees but not to new hires under some changes set to take effect July 1. Finance staff will supply commissioners the department‑level FTE detail and the list of positions removed so the commission can decide whether additional staffing changes are needed before final adoption.
