Analysis gives insight to city payrolls in St. Cloud area

Dec. 15--Small cities in Central Minnesota spent more than $3.6 million paying 160 employees in 2012.

Those staffs served more than 21,000 residents in Albany, Avon, Clear Lake, Clearwater, Cold Spring, Foley, Rice, Richmond, Rockville and St. Augusta at a cost of about $170 per capita.

Salary data collected by the St. Cloud Times reflects each city's choices on how to serve residents' public safety, water, sanitation and other needs.

Some of the salary costs reflect the identities some of those communities want to maintain, such as Foley as a place for families with its municipal pool and Richmond with its civic ice arena as a place for a first job.

Many of the numbers also reflect the lingering squeeze of the recession that has kept city budgets tight. Some city staffs have a small number of full-time staffers, requiring some employees to wear many hats on a day-to-day basis.

The St. Cloud Times requested data on total compensation for employees of these Central Minnesota cities: Albany, Avon, Clear Lake, Clearwater, Cold Spring, Foley, Rice, Richmond, Rockville, Sartell, Sauk Rapids, St. Augusta, St. Cloud, St. Joseph and Waite Park.

Employees include full- and part-time workers and those who are permanent and temporary; the data generally does not include part-time or volunteer firefighters or council pay.

In cities with populations of fewer than 5,000, money spent on salaries ranges from $90,000 in Clear Lake, which has a population of 545, to $910,000 in Cold Spring, which serves more than 4,000 residents.

Salary costs don't necessarily follow population. Rockville's salary total is the second lowest while the city has about 1,000 more people than Avon, which pays the second-highest total to employees.

Options, choices

While small cities are often expected to provide the same array of services as large cities, leaders can choose methods that might not be reflected in the salary data. For example, the amount Rockville pays to the Stearns County Sheriff's Office for police coverage isn't reflected in salary costs, but the $200,000Avon spends on police salaries is.

Rockville City Administrator Rena Weber said the city has had a policing contract with Stearns County for years. Agreeing on a contract saves city staff time in dealing with police expenses, but also gives them less control over staffing and other decisions.

The decision on how to deliver public safety swung the other way in Foley. Leaders there decided to re-establish the city police department last year instead of continuing a contract with Benton County.

City Administrator Sarah Brunn said city officials decided it was more cost-effective to start its own department. The decision also gave the City Council and staff more control of staffing and how patrol time was used.

The added department also adds to the duties of existing staff.

"When you add more personnel that you're managing, there are time costs associated with that," Brunn said. "There are more moving parts with the city."

Richmond has a joint-powers agreement for the Cold Spring-Richmond Police Department, one that was reviewed in 2012, City Administrator Martin Bode said. At that time, Bode said he did a budget analysis, looking at staffing, insurance, benefits and equipment costs of maintaining a department.

The City Council ultimately decided to continue with the joint-powers agreement, as it's mutually beneficial for Cold Spring and Richmond, Bode said. The agreement also lets Richmond give some input on how the department is run and hiring decisions.

Amenities

There's also a difference reflected in salary numbers that is tied to amenities a city offers. Foley's municipal pool is one example. It hires 15-20 pool workers every summer, making Foley's total number of employees, 44, look much higher than other cities of similar size.

The temporary lifeguards, instructors and pool manager accounted for about $33,000 in salaries in 2012, which doesn't include maintenance or other work related to the pool done by other public employees.

In Richmond, the amenity it offers isn't a pool; it's the River Lakes Civic Arena. A number of part-time employees in Richmond are paid to work at the arena.

"I came from southern Minnesota, where every city had swimming pools," Bode said. "I come up here and it's ice arenas. It's a difference in culture."

"What I like best about the ice arena is being able to provide first-time employment to young adults," he said.

In 2012, Richmond's seasonal arena employees made about $10,000 total, averaging a little more than $1,000 each.

Small city, many hats

Often the smallest cities only have a few people in the office to deal with everything cities need to provide, from zoning to water and more.

The learning curve can be steep for new staff members, but Brunn and others have benefited from on-the-job experience and other training. It requires everyone to be flexible, Brunn said, especially with the three employees, including herself, who work in the city office.

"It's one of the advantages of a small-town staff," she said. "The team environment makes my job much easier every day."

"We wear many hats," Weber said of her staff in Rockville. On any given morning, she can be working on zoning, building permits, clerical work, bills and investments -- whatever comes up.

St. Augusta City Administrator Bill McCabe can be found doing anything from answering the phone to inputting water bills. Because St. Augusta is a relatively new city, he said leaders there want to maintain a competitive tax rate.

"They wanted to remain competitive but not have huge increases," he said.

In Richmond, Bode also knows the pressure to be many things to many people. And since he's started in 2007, staff has fallen from six full-time employees to four.

The change made the need for employee efficiency even more apparent.

"Having efficient employees makes everybody's jobs easier," he said.

2012 salary data for area cities with fewer than 5,000 people

Salaries per capita Population 2010 City employees in 2012 Total salaries

Albany$190 2,561 20 $486,000

Avon$372 1,396 17 $519,000

Clear Lake$166 545 3 $90,000**

Clearwater$158 1,735 7 $275,000

Cold Spring$226 4,025 21 $909,000

Foley$195 2,603 44 $508,000

Rice$184 1,275 9 $235,000

Richmond$142 1,422 15 $203,000

Rockville$72 2,448 13 $177,000

St. Augusta$68 3,317 10 $228,000

Total 21,327 159 $3,630,000

*Rounded to the nearest thousand.

**Part of Clear Lake's firefighting salaries are included in this number, where jobs overlap.

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