ROY — Roy Mayor Ann Jackson has been in office for just about a month now and has some big aims.

But she said it wasn’t the easiest choice to move up from her position on the City Council.

“That was a hard decision for me to make, because I thought our other mayor did a fantastic job and had a lot more experience in certain areas than I did,” she said. “But I had so many mayors from like other cities that said, ‘Ann, it doesn’t matter how much you know, it’s how much you will let other people help you, because that’s what they’re here for, and you have a great staff to help you. But nobody loves Roy more than you. You are Miss Roy. You love Roy. You know everybody.”

She said her decision to run came down to her love of Roy.

I just want to be transparent in everything that I do and say, and just try to do what’s best for the city,” she said.

Jackson said one of the biggest things she wants to tackle is employee retention, especially in public safety after it was noted that seven of the city’s firefighters left in the last year alone.

“That’s one of our biggest things we’re going to work on, is retaining our employees and figuring out how we can keep them here and keep the wages competitive,” she said. “Our fire department is what 20% below most fire departments wages. … One had been here 13 years, and we always thought if they were here at least 10 years, they’re going to stay, but they’re not.”

She said that this had led the city to look at other paths.

“We have a great fire chief, so now we’re debating on whether we’re going to go to the Weber Fire District,” she said. “We’ve got to figure out what’s going to be best for our citizens and best for our fire department. He loves Roy and he wants to stay here, but it’s hard for the fire department.”

Roy City Manager Matt Andrews said this isn’t a challenge unique to Roy’s fire department or Roy in general.

“Ogden went through this a couple years ago,” he said. “I think every city has faced these challenges. We we went through this with our police department, I think, three or four years ago. It just seems like with inflation and everything else, if you don’t keep up, you start falling behind.”

He said other public services have also been impacted by the private market sapping city employees away.

“Public Works has been a struggle for us too, lately,” he said. “We have a pretty high turnover ratio there as well, just because of the fact of the private market, you have a lot of money was going into that. And so we were losing a lot of employees going to that market, to construction and different things because that’s their competition.

Jackson said the city will be exploring options as the year goes on.