In the newly passed budget — approved by the City Council last week — all city employees get a 1% cost of living increase, a 4% merit increase for all non-sworn employees and a step increase for all public safety employees on the anniversary date of their employment.

Ogden City Council Executive Director Janene Eller-Smith told the Standard-Examiner these were important steps to take given the current job market.

“Especially with public safety, it’s very, very competitive,” she said. “It costs a lot of money to train officers, so they wanted to make sure that if you get (new) officers coming in, that they stay. We also wanted to be able to attract experienced officers to come.”

She said previous raises have helped area law enforcement immensely.

“Chief (Eric) Young mentioned during his budget presentation that Ogden City was the only fully staffed police department in the whole state, and he attributed a lot to the increases that had happened for police and fire the previous two years. This just kind of continues that.”

Eller-Smith said the city is looking to keep this trend going all around.

“It’s my understanding the administration is going to do another benchmark study this coming year to make sure the city is maintaining market-rate pay so we can maintain good employees,” she said.

Originally, city officials were looking at paying employees even more, Eller-Smith added, but circumstances began working against the plan.

“The council and administrative staff did discuss more than a 1% (cost of living) increase,” she said. “Cost of living is more like 5%-7% inflation. But sales tax has been starting to dip and there’s been a little concern about revenues going forward. The council opted for a conservative 1%, and they will be tracking sales tax for the next six months or so and have agreed to reevaluate that to determine if they can provide additional increases for employees then.”

Eller-Smith said additional highlights include:

• The beginning of reconstruction of the Marshall White Center.
• A consultant and staffing for rewriting the city’s general plan.
• A new fire training facility.
• An evaluation of property recently bought from the Ogden School District for the construction of a sports complex.
• $1 million for the Quality Neighborhoods Initiative for rehabbing medium-income housing.

The city also didn’t attempt to pass a property tax increase this year.

Eller-Smith said it isn’t the flashiest of budgets, but there are big things on the horizon.

“It was a pretty uneventful budget because all of the big things were already in the budget,” she said. “Union Station is going to be a big thing in the upcoming years.”