Payson council presses staff for detailed contract spending history as engineering positions remain unfilled
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Summary
Councilmembers pressed staff for historic invoices and options after hearing that engineering and specialized public works positions have been hard to fill, and that contract firms are being used as stopgaps at significant cost.
Councilmembers pressed town staff on June 3 for a clearer accounting of how much the town spends on contract employees and consultants, after hearing that several engineering-related positions (including town engineer and plan-review staff) remain vacant and have been covered by consultants.
Staff said the town advertises hard-to-fill positions, offers recruitment bonuses and has used an executive recruitment firm (Duffy Group) to broaden outreach into the Southwest. Despite those steps, staffreported recruitment for civil engineers and plan-exam specialists has been unsuccessful and the town has relied on consulting firms and contracted employees (IPM, Brown and Associates, Strand & Associates among others) to keep projects moving.
Councilmembers questioned value and cost: staff said some plan-review work is a pass-through (fees collected cover consultant expenses), while other contracted positions are treated as short-term staff and paid from salary savings. Examples cited by staff included year-to-date invoice totals through April: Brown and Associates ($234,964) and IPM ($577,856), with recent single-month invoice amounts reported. Council asked staff to pull multi-year invoice histories by vendor (not only budgeted amounts) so the council can compare contract spend plus salary-lines to an apples-to-apples total personnel and contract cost measure.
Staff also described staged strategies for replacing vacant roles: hiring engineers-in-training with multi-year certification pathways; offering recruitment bonuses; and using consultants until internal staff can be certified to perform chief-building-official duties. Councilmembers expressed interest in testing alternative contract providers, reviewing contract scopes and potentially increasing salary ranges for "hard-to-fill" positions if necessary. Staff said the advertised town-engineer range is $117,000 to $175,000 plus a recruitment bonus.
Ending: Council directed staff to provide historical invoice totals by vendor and an aggregated, multi-year view of personnel plus professional-services spending to inform final budget choices and recruitment trade-offs.