Prescott Valley council approves classification and compensation changes after study finds pay compression

The Prescott Valley Town Council unanimously approved a package of classification and compensation recommendations after hearing a detailed presentation from Evergreen Solutions on town pay structures and employee feedback.

"About 64% of employees are in the first quartile of the pay range," Evergreen project manager Michael Misrahi told the council, summarizing a key finding that staff described as the primary driver of compression concerns. Misrahi said the study combined internal outreach, job assessment tools and a primary market survey across about 80 benchmark positions.

The consultant and staff recommended standardizing the width of pay ranges for general employees to 50% and making targeted grade assignment updates to close gaps for specific jobs that lag the market. For public safety, they recommended raising the starting point to better align police ranks with the market, reducing officer and sergeant step counts (from 13/11 to 10) and moving to a flat 4% step increase across steps.

Shauna Dechant, the town's Human Resources Director, said the recommended changes focus pay dollars on employees who are behind their projected placement. "We're looking at approximately 310 employees," she said, and noted 81 public safety employees would be affected by the public-safety adjustments (about 26% of the workforce). Dechant and the consultant said the department set aside $1.5 million for compensation adjustments, and moving public safety to the new step plan was estimated to increase payroll by roughly 3.5% (with affected employees closer to a 4% range in some scenarios).

Council members asked for local comparisons and cost estimates. Misrahi said general employees, on average, sit near the 75th percentile of peer markets while public safety agencies were closer to the 50th percentile; the recommendations aim to bring parity across groups without changing starting points for general staff. The consultant also proposed a class-parity placement method so employees would be placed in the revised ranges based on time in their current classification and relevant experience.

After discussion, a councilmember moved to approve the classification and compensation strategy as set forth by Evergreen Solutions and staff. The motion was seconded and, by electronic vote, passed unanimously.

Staff said the next steps include finalizing job-description updates, implementing the salary placements under the adopted structure and continuing periodic market reviews on a multi-year cadence.