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Public Works director asks council to restore frozen positions; council to revisit before final budget adoption
Summary
Public Works Director Chris Riggs urged the council to restore three previously frozen positions (traffic crew leader, mechanic II, and parks caretaker), a package estimated at $261,943 including benefits; council expressed support in principle but deferred a final funding decision until staff provides head-count history and additional data.
Public Works Director Chris Riggs told the council his department is operating at roughly 19% below authorized staffing and asked the council to restore three positions that finance had removed during committee review: a traffic crew leader, a mechanic II and a parks caretaker (aggregate cost about $261,943 including benefits).
Riggs and several councilmembers described operational impacts: a largely single-person traffic crew, deferred maintenance on vehicles and equipment, and difficulty keeping up with street/park maintenance and emergency response duties. Riggs said the department needs continuity and an equipment-audit process so the city can plan for major replacements rather than being hit with multiple high-cost purchases at once.
Council members acknowledged the need and compared the requested incremental cost to other proposed items in the budget. One councilmember suggested funding the public-works positions instead of adding a single in-house city-attorney line item that appeared in the draft for $235,000; others cautioned against making that trade immediately without broader analysis. Council did not adopt the positions during the workshop but asked staff to provide historic head-count and vacancy data, and to identify potential funding sources or offsets.
Why it matters: the positions are intended to sustain maintenance, traffic-safety responsiveness and fleet health; the council was asked to weigh near-term operational capacity against tight fund-balance constraints.
What happened next: staff were directed to return with a head-count history, the net cost to restore the positions, and analysis of alternatives (outsourcing vs. in-house), and to place the matter on a future agenda so the council can act before or shortly after budget adoption.
