Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Workforce Compensation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Flagstaff budget recommends citywide pay moves, market adjustments and selective new positions
Summary
Council heard staff proposals to continue market-based pay adjustments, fund targeted reclassifications and add a small number of positions; staff said the recommended resources prioritize compensation over new recurring hires.
Sarah Schorn, Flagstaff's HR lead, and Brandy Souda, the city's finance director, presented council with human-resources metrics and personnel recommendations during the April 24 budget retreat.
Schorn said the city's vacancy rate "as of today, we're at 12%" and that the organization is budgeted for 905.2 full-time equivalent positions. She told the council the city had about 22 active job postings and more than 50 active requisitions, and that applications and hiring activity were up this spring.
The recommended budget emphasizes continued market adjustments and pay-for-performance. Souda said the general fund includes roughly $5.7 million in employee investments for fiscal year 2025–26 (including about $2.2 million for merit and pay-for-performance and $3.5 million in market adjustments for general-fund positions) and that additional citywide market funding was budgeted in other funds.
"We are going to continue to move positions closer to market," Schorn said, describing a multi-year effort that targets classifications more than 7.5% behind market.
Other personnel items: staff recommended a handful of one-time positions to support projects (an IT manager onetime project role, a fire-captain CAD project position, mechanics and temporary library positions); staff also asked council to approve 33 classifications (affecting about 76 FTEs) for reclassification review over the next year. Joanne Key, deputy city manager, described a planned reorganization in community development that would move housing to report to the city manager and create a planning-and-development-services director role.
What the council asked: members pressed on parental leave and other benefits. Schorn said expanding parental leave further would have significant cost: "That one came down to cost. That one was a cost of about $500,000, to double our ... parental leave," she said, and that the larger parental-leave requests were not funded in the recommended package.
Why it matters: The recommended investment keeps the city's pay-schedule modernization moving while limiting recurring additions to head count. Staff said the approach was intended to improve recruitment and retention in hard-to-fill roles (mechanics, lifeguards), and to close pay gaps revealed by the classification study.
Ending: Council agreed to the staff approach in the recommended budget and asked staff to return with implementation details and to monitor vacancy and recruitment metrics monthly.
