Council opens multi‑department review of recruitment and retention policy amid pay and staffing pressures

Syracuse City Council members and department heads opened a broad discussion of the city’s recruitment and retention plan. The item reviewed recent budget choices, the city’s benchmarking approach, and department‑level staffing pressures and tradeoffs.

City administrators summarized prior benchmarking practices and noted that pay adjustments during the post‑COVID period (including some double‑digit increases in certain public‑safety roles) left the current budget under pressure. Staff said average annual increases over a longer timeframe were lower (roughly 2–3% per year across a decade), but that the recent market forced larger, uneven adjustments for some positions. “It was a catch up,” a staff member said, describing earlier years when pay was held flat in some roles.

Department heads emphasized retention of experienced mid‑level staff (the “teachers” who train newer employees) as the most pressing risk. The police chief told the council that retention is his “biggest concern” after training costs and that nearby agencies are offering materially higher pay at recruiting and advertised wages; he also raised timing constraints tied to background checks and academy classes that can delay placing new hires on the street. The public‑works director described similar pressure on skilled utility‑crew leads and suggested more frequent benchmarking and review of on‑call pay.

Council members discussed options staff had prepared: (a) continuing to benchmark against a set of peer cities (the packet included seven cities) and choose a target percentile; (b) using a regional or state inflation index (for example, the state retirement cost‑of‑living index) as an annual COLA; (c) applying caps or phased adjustments for large single‑year moves; and (d) more frequent (annual) benchmarking instead of every other year. No final policy change was adopted; councilmembers asked for additional data by department, clarification of which peer jurisdictions should be included in benchmarks, and potential fiscal scenarios that balance pay competitiveness with the city’s revenue outlook.

Ending: Staff will provide more granular, department‑level benchmarking data, options for annual vs. biennial benchmarking, and scenario projections for the next budget cycle. The council emphasized retaining experienced staff as a priority and requested follow‑up reports before budget adoption.