Lake Havasu officials unveil pay-plan overhaul to address recruitment, estimate roughly $1.9M first-year cost

City staff presented a compensation and classification study May 15 that would shift most civilian jobs from a grade-and-step system to open pay ranges, add targeted step adjustments for police and fire, and budget an initial implementation cost the consultant and staff said is just under $2 million fully burdened.

The study, presented by consultant Matt Weatherly of Public Sector Personnel Consultants and by Doctor Kimilton of the city team, was framed as an effort to bring pay “closer to market” while keeping changes sustainable. “One of the challenges that we have … is we clearly have areas where recruitment is a major problem,” Doctor Kimilton told the council, adding that the city regularly has “somewhere around 10 vacancies for police officers at any given point in time.”

Staff and the consultant said the proposal would: migrate civilian positions to an open-range pay table, address about 155 civilian employees who fall below the proposed new minimums, keep public-safety step structures but move many employees to the next nearest step, and budget…