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Despite costing an additional $24,000, Crescent City councilors urged their city manager to turn three vacant seasonal positions into two full-time positions instead of the one initially proposed.

Noting that Crescent City hasn’t been able to staff four seasonal maintenance worker positions and a fifth vacancy is imminent, City Manager Eric Wier proposed consolidating three of them into one full-time position.

However, Mayor Blake Inscore pointed out that the city has an obligation to maintain $8 million in Proposition 68-funded amenities at Beachfront Park and “obviously we’re not going to be able to do that with temporary workers anymore.”

A full-time employee can gain institutional knowledge a seasonal worker can’t, Inscore said, and they can be cross trained in other areas besides parks.

“I would still keep two seasonal workers,” Inscore said, bringing up the bike pump track Crescent City expects to cut the ribbon on next month. “As this park gets developed, we have got to maintain it. We’ve got an amenity right across the way here that’s going to require us to make sure we stay on top of it.”

Wier laid out plans for reorganizing Crescent City’s staffing organization at a special City Council meeting Monday. In addition to having difficulty filling the vacant part-time positions, the city manager said the reorganization would address vacancies in the finance department and economic development/recreation department.

Those vacancies had been a challenge for some time, he told City Councilors, but had recently been making it difficult for the city to conduct its business.

Though councilors Jason Greenough and Kelly Schellong were absent, Wier said he was looking for direction from the City Council. The proposed staff reorganization will come back to the City Council at a future regular meeting, he said.

“This is basically analyzing our current situation and how best to position ourselves for the future,” he said.

Crescent City currently staffs 78 full-time equivalent employees, Wier said. It’s also in the middle of a compensation study that should be presented to the City Council in about two months. Wier said the city also offers a good benefit package, which includes health insurance and retirement.

But part-timers don’t get those benefits, Wier said, and the city is competing with private businesses like Home Depot and even McDonalds when it comes to wages. He noted that a part-time maintenance worker as well as an account clerk in the finance department receive $18 an hour.

“Home Depot is offering $20 to start. McDonalds offers similar,” he said. “You’re looking at those jobs making the same wage, working eight hours in the sun mowing parks or dealing with customers’ utility billing. That becomes challenging.”

In the public works department, Crescent City has actively recruited staff three times. People have applied for those jobs, Wier said, but the city has been unable to make a hire.

Three part-time positions “in theory” equates to about 3,000 hours, while one full-time position is roughly 2,000 hours. But because the city has been unable to fill its part-time positions, Wier said consolidating them into one full time position wouldn’t be an additional cost to the city.

“The option we’re proposing for now is to keep two of those seasonals and see how we do,” Wier said. “We’re going try to go back out [for recruitment] again.”

Consolidating two seasonal workers into one full-time worker would cost about $22,000 to $23,000, Wier said.

In the finance department, Crescent City hired two part-time account clerks, which take utility payments from residents. One lasted for three weeks before deciding the job wasn’t for her, Wier said. The other lasted two days before deciding to leave.

Finance Director Linda Leaver said it takes several months at least to be effective as an account clerk.

Currently those part-time account clerks handle the utility billing. There’s a quarter-time file clerk and a finance technician that handles accounts payable and payroll.

Proposed changes include changing the file clerk position, which is currently staffed, to an office technician and increasing the number of hours from 10 per week to 20 per week, Wier said. They’re also proposing hiring an additional full-time finance tech who will handle accounts payable and cash receipts while the other full-time finance technician will take on payroll and benefits.

According to Wier, these changes be an increase of about $73,000 to the current budget. However, staff anticipate it will take time to fill those positions, Wier said the expense will probably be less at just under $50,000.

Leaver said the $73,000 expense would be “if we had done this before the current fiscal year started.” That is an ongoing annual cost to the city, she said.

“The $49,000 estimate is if that position gets filled in October,” Leaver said. “It’ll probably take longer than that, so the budget this year will probably be less than that.”

Another proposed change includes changing the title of the city’s grants coordinator to grant/economic development manager. Wier said that Bridget Lacey is currently managing more than 75 grant awards totaling $36 million.

The proposed change includes increasing the position’s salary range from $65,600-$79,736 to $75,842-$92,182. Wier said the grants manager would also be part of the administration department instead of the economic development/recreation department.

Wier said Lacey will be managing the city’s grant for its next Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy as well as its strategic downtown aster plan. He said the proposed salary range would be equivalent to the IT manager’s range.

“Grants are a funny fit when it comes to economic development,” Wier said, adding that the economic development/recreation director would revert to a recreation director/events coordinator position. “That [person] was in charge of running the pool, the RV park and, really, events in the Cultural Center like a business.”

That recreation director and events coordinator would also be tasked with community outreach via social media, Wier said. The reorganization also includes a proposed change to the salary range for the recreation director/events coordinator. Currently the economic development and recreation director’s salary ranges from $96,322 to $120,783. The new salary range would be from $83,427 to $101,400.

Finally, Wier said the proposed reorganization includes changing the title for information systems administrator to information technology manager. The city manager said this change is due to the fact that the current IT Manager, Fritz Ludemann manages an IS/GIS technician, Taylor Patch. Wier said Ludemann “has been talking about retirement for awhile.”

“His recommendation is to remove the Bachelor’s degree requirement from this position when we move forward,” he said. “It’ll still be in there in the MOU that there’s a 3.5 percent [wage] increase if you have it, but he’s thinking a lot of these professionals, especially if they’re generalists, a good career pathway could be to come up through an organization and they might not have a Bachelor’s degree and you might lose out on a good candidate.”

Crescent City currently uses a consultant for human resources, according to Wier.

Inscore said that while that contracted human resources position saves the city money, he felt that employees benefit from having a person they can see in person.

“People are already frustrated with trying to make that phone call to somebody and getting transferred from here to there,” he said. “I just feel like from an organizational standpoint… our employees best benefit from having a person they can go and talk to. That’s my opinion, but if it’s not possible it’s not possible.”

The Crescent City Council’s next regular meeting will be Tuesday. According to Wier, the city expects to hold a ribbon cutting on its bike pump track at noon Sept. 21, though it won’t be totally finished.

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