FARR WEST — The city has six full-time employees, but there is no personnel manual or written job descriptions and nothing in writing pertaining to salary and benefits, Councilman Tim Shupe said.
He said he takes some responsibility for not pushing the issue sooner, but a committee is now being formed to help create a personnel manual.
“There are two council members on the committee, and as many as we can afford to have of current (city) employees,” he said. The committee’s first tasks will be to identify job titles and job responsibilities, as well as salaries.
“I don’t see this committee being restricted to any particular size,” Shupe said.
Councilman Tom Burkland said John Cardon, who is the Farr West city treasurer, should be part of the process.
“He is very familiar with the interfacing of the budget salary changes, and what both up and down would be,” Burkland said.
City Recorder Lindsay Stratford is researching what nearby cities do with their written personnel policies, job description and pay scales.
Both Burkland and Councilmen Lee Dickemore agreed to be on the personnel committee, and will inform other council members of what progress is being made.
Councilman Paul Dinsdale said he was concerned about the amount of time it would take to complete a personnel manual and said the issue of salaries needs to be addressed fairly quickly.
The city has six full-time employees and a few who are part-time. Dickemore said each employee will be asked to describe and justify their workload.
City Clerk Andrea Zweifel said no other city nearby has fewer than 10 employees, so a comparison is difficult.
Dinsdale said most cities have two employees per 1,000 residents, but Farr West only has one full-time employee per 1,000 residents.
Burkland said the goal of the personnel project is to compare salaries of employees in other cities with comparable jobs. He said Farr West should look at the total compensation, not just salaries.
“We want to make people interested to be here long term,” he said. “We are blessed to have a pretty good group of employees. We don’t want to lose them — we just want to make sure it’s fair and stays fair.”
Councilwoman Ava Painter suggested employees start keeping a daily log of all the duties they perform.
“I am sure there are things they do that they don’t even realize they do, I can guarantee that,” Painter said. She also said some employees’ duties will change with the seasons.
Council members agreed to have the committee provide updates on the new policies in future council meetings and plan to come up with a written personnel policy and job descriptions and salary descriptions as well.
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