City Council approves Public Works staffing restructure, immediate 5% pay change for assistant role

The City Council on Aug. 26 approved a Public Works staffing proposal that splits two existing operations supervisor positions into an operations manager and an operations supervisor and includes targeted wage-bracket adjustments intended to ease hiring and reduce wage compression. Council members voted to approve the portion of the staffing proposal that included a 5% immediate pay increase for the assistant public works position and bracket adjustments for the new operations manager and supervisor.

City staff presented the plan as a response to a pending retirement and difficulty filling a technically demanding supervisor vacancy. The administration said reclassifying and redistributing technical responsibilities — creating an operations manager with broader technical oversight and a separate operations supervisor aligned to day-to-day supervisory duties — would make it more feasible to recruit locally and train new hires on the job.

The proposal as presented included specific wage changes: an immediate annual increase to the assistant public works position reported as $4,470; a 7% overall bracket change for the operations manager with an immediate increase of about 4.5% (approximately $3,665 annualized, prorated for the year); and a reduction to the bracket for the revised operations supervisor role (a top-end decrease around 5% and a bottom-end decrease about 2.5%). Staff estimated that the net fiscal effect in the first year would be a small savings of roughly $889, compounded in future years. The presentation said the changes were designed not to increase the adopted budget.

Council members asked for clarification on recruitment, subject-matter expertise, and on-call coverage. Staff said one current operations supervisor is retiring in September and that the city lacks sufficient qualified applicants under the old job specification. Staff described the operations manager as the position that would hold the certifications and primary technical responsibility across water, wastewater, streets and facilities, and said both positions would share on-call emergency duties while the city works to expand internal certification and training over time. Staff cautioned that obtaining certifications requires substantial on-site training hours and time for testing; managers and assistant directors were not presented as holding all operator certifications at this time.

During discussion some council members objected to immediately increasing the assistant public works pay while approving the structural reorganization; others supported the wage adjustments as necessary to address compression and retention. The council member who moved the motion specified that the immediate 5% increase to the assistant public works position be included; the motion passed on an affirmative voice vote.

The staffing reorganization and wage bracket changes will be implemented by staff consistent with job descriptions presented at the meeting and with prorated pay changes for the remainder of the fiscal year. No additional budget appropriation was requested at the meeting; staff said the adjustments were structured to be budget-neutral in the current fiscal year.

Councilors and staff indicated they will continue to advertise the positions broadly (including out-of-jurisdiction recruitment) while pursuing internal succession and training to develop local subject-matter expertise. Staff also offered to provide additional data on recruitment outcomes and on-call coverage plans at a future meeting.

The council tabled a related set of manager-level job descriptions to a subsequent meeting to allow rewording and final review.