Possible New Hires in City of Healdsburg Budget for Next Year

The Healdsburg City Council opened to door to at least two and possibly three full-time employees in the upcoming city budget at a planning meeting Wednesday night.

General Fund Supplemental Requests from key city agencies included several contract positions that, under scrutiny, appeared to be more cost-effective if turned into full-time or part-time city employees.

Police Chief Kevin Burke’s proposed request included, along with two new vehicles for the police fleet, a half-time parking control officer, 20 hours a week with no benefits. Burke admitted, “Parking enforcement has been de-prioritized,” and said the halftime parking control officer would work the Thursday-Sunday period when parking spaces are at a premium, due to out of town visitors.

Under questioning by Councilmember Gary Plass, himself a former police officer, Burke said that a full time parking officer would be valuable to stabilize the enforcement of parking regulation, but doubted that its revenue from parking tickets would pay for at most half of the position. Instead, he said its main value would be in freeing up police for other duties.

The amount projected for a half-time officer without benefits was $21,000; a full –time officer would cost at least twice that, plus benefits – totaling about $58,000. Although Councilmember Jim Wood suggested two half-time officers would be another option, Plass repeated his opinion that a full-time parking officer would bring a full measure of benefit to the department, and insisted that as much as half of the officer’s cost could be recouped in parking fees.

The instruction given to Administrative Services Director Jone Hayes was to work up a budget that included a full-time police officer, and the option of one or two half-time officers, but Chief Burke help firm: “The safest thing to do is to assume the revenue would not be significant.”

The other two possible positions came from the Planning and Building Department, which asked for a contract building inspector and a contract project planner in their supplemental requests.

But again, the numbers proposed in the supplemental line items were out of line with what the Council was willing to appropriate: $220,480 for a contract building inspector, and $260,000 for a contract project planner.

City Manager Marjie Pettus reminded the Council that the two contract positions were requested by Council as a way to provide services without a full-time commitment in the City Budget. However, the numbers proved to be roughly twice what the salary of full-time personnel in those positions would cost, forcing to Council to ask the Treasurer to present the two positions as FTE in the upcoming budget instead.

At present City Building Director Scott Ward operates essentially a one-person office, and hiring a full time city employee to work in that department would allow “grooming” for a future city building inspector, another advantage over a contract solution.

The positive outlook on the city budget reflected cautions optimism over the improved state of the local economy, and the expectation that more business and construction projects were likely to be coming in the next five years.