The Powell City Council has hired a consultant to study how city employees’ pay stacks up against other municipalities and the private sector. In September, the council unanimously approved a $33,470 contract with a Florida-based firm, MGT Consulting, to assess wages across all departments and update job descriptions.

The city hasn’t undertaken such a study since 2007, and “I think it’s time,” City Administrator Zack Thorington had said at a May budget meeting, when the council agreed to include funding for the study.

Over the past two decades, “we've tried to keep up with the Joneses by manipulating or changing our scale with the COLA,” Thorington said, referring to cost of living adjustments. However, he said those pay bumps haven’t kept up with inflation and “I don’t think we ever could.”

Between merit increases and COLAs, city employees’ pay rose about 7% in fiscal year 2022-23, followed by an average 6.2% bump in fiscal year 2023-24, said City Clerk Tiffany Brando.

The city looks at wage data every year, City Finance Director Kaela Nelson has said, but the outside assessment will be more in-depth — going beyond job titles to examine and compare job descriptions.

As an example of how the evaluation could prove useful, Thorington said an internal review of police department wages found they were competitive at the upper levels, but lagged with entry level positions. Following several departures and flagging interest in the positions, the city wound up raising pay for police officers and dispatchers by $3 an hour in an effort to be more competitive. Thorington also noted the city had to make significant changes to the pay offered to part-time parks and aquatics department workers last year “because we weren’t getting anybody.”

At the May meeting, Thorington had pointed to the short-staffed police department as one reason for a city-wide wage assessment, because “I don’t want to see what’s happening [there] to the others before it’s too late.”

After putting out a request for proposals, the city received offers from 12 different firms. Thorington called the response “quite impressive,” saying some Wyoming municipalities have gotten just two or three on similar efforts.

City staff combed through the submissions — including the prices and timelines — to narrow the field to four finalists and ultimately land on MGT Consulting.

The city had budgeted $50,000 for the project, so MGT’s proposal came in significantly under budget. It’s broken down as $28,470 to study the city’s classifications and compensation and $5,000 to update job descriptions.

“The price is right,” Thorington told the council at a Sept. 16 meeting. He also liked the company’s timeline, which calls for completing the project within four months.

Organized in Tampa as MGT Impact Solutions LLC, the 50-year-old firm offers “global technological, educational, organizational and staffing consulting services to the public and private sectors.”

On its website, MGT boasts of having over 30,000 client engagements and 800 employees while projecting it will top $400 million in revenue this year.

“They have done work all over the country, including Wyoming,” Thorington said. That encompasses not only wage assessments, but also grant writing and consulting on new hires, he said, “so they’re not new to the area.”

MGT will perform all of its work remotely, including interacting with and gathering input from employees, Thorington said. The city’s point of contact is based in Illinois, Brando said.

At the Sept. 16 meeting, City Councilman Zane Logan made the motion to approve MGT’s contract and it was unanimously approved. Back in 2019, when he was then serving as the city’s administrator, Logan had recommended the city conduct a salary and benefits survey. In the budget message for fiscal year 2019-20, Logan noted it had been over a decade since the last review and said he believed there were “one or more job descriptions that may have fallen behind in their market value.”

Powell employees’ wages will continue to kind of hang in limbo while MGT’s work is underway. Councilors included a 2.5% across-the-board pay bump within this year’s budget, but Thorington has said they’re holding off on awarding that cost of living adjustment until the assessment is complete.