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Vienna council discusses rising personnel costs, budget includes 3% pay increase and starting-pay adjustment
Summary
At a special session, Vienna city officials reviewed the fiscal-year budget with attention to staffing, wages and recruiting: HR reported 78 full-time and 10 part-time employees, the draft budget includes a 3% across-the-board raise, and the city said it has adjusted its starting-pay scale for new hires.
The Vienna City Council met in a special session to review the coming fiscal-year budget, focusing on staffing levels, employee pay and recruitment strategies.
During the discussion, a council member said HR reported 78 full-time and 10 part-time employees as of March and cited total city revenue of $11,926,536. The member warned that the combined share of personal services and contract services has risen from about 71.5% to about 75.9% of the budget and said that trend could force consideration of new revenue sources if costs are not controlled.
"The last thing I want to see is somebody come back later and say we have to have city tax," the council member said, urging attention to salary and benefit costs.
Stephanie in HR said the city is actively planning for several anticipated retirements over the next two to four years and has redistributed workloads for non–department-head positions rather than automatically refilling every vacancy. She noted the parks director position remains budgeted and would be filled when needed.
"We have already actually started doing some of those actions," Stephanie said, describing coordination between HR and finance to manage retirements and staffing needs.
Separately, a budget official who participated in department-level reviews said operating budgets were held flat or reduced in many areas and that the proposed budget includes a 3% across-the-board increase and longevity pay. The official characterized the plan as positioning the city to be "a very strong, financially resilient municipality."
On hiring, council members raised concerns that entry-level starting pay may not be competitive with some private employers. The administration said it has adjusted its starting-pay scale so new hires will not enter the payroll below the current lowest-paid employee; the transcript gives an illustrative example comparing $16 to "17.25" (formatting in the record is unclear).
"So by doing this we adjust our starting pay so that when that new hire comes in they're already at a place comparable," the budget official said, adding that benefits (health, vision, dental and retirement) are emphasized when recruiting.
Officials told the council that recruiting efforts have yielded sufficient candidate pools for recent openings, with only a small number of candidates declining offers for pay reasons. At the time of the meeting, officials said the city had one or two vacancies.
The session also included brief operational updates: staff reported that a solution had been implemented for the senior-center elevator phone. "Garrett came up with a solution that is satisfactory to the elevator company and the elevator inspector," a staff member identified as Liz said, explaining that charged mobile phones will be kept and swapped for the elevator as long as someone is present during open hours.
No formal votes or motions on budget adoption were recorded in the transcript of the special session. The budget discussion concluded with council members and staff agreeing to continue the budget process that ties department goals and objectives to the fiscal plan.
