With the City of Powell struggling to hire police personnel and an electrical lineman, city leaders recently hiked the wages for the positions.

The Powell City Council raised the minimum starting pay for police officers and dispatchers in August by nearly 11% and 9%, respectively, and the body decided earlier this month to raise the minimum pay for journeymen lineman by nearly 16%.

All city employees received a 3% raise in the fiscal year that began July 1, with some receiving additional merit-based hikes. However, Powell Police Chief Jim Rhea and Electric Superintendent Steve Franck said they needed bigger increases to compete with other employers and fill their vacant positions.

Short for a long time

Franck has had only one lineman assisting him for roughly the past year. Speaking at the Oct. 5 council meeting, he said the few applications the city had received for the open position “just weren’t up to par to what we need.”

“I mean, the comments I was getting before, I’d get a phone call, and it’d be like, ‘Are you sure you’re not looking for an apprentice … with that wage?’” Franck said, adding that he heard, “all kinds of comments like that.”

One longtime lineman, Ronnie Gillett, left the city in September 2025 over concerns about the city’s pay.

At a cost of $33,470, an outside firm called MGT Consulting evaluated the city’s wages last year and helped restructure the city’s pay scale. According to Gillett, however, the consultant’s report and council’s restructuring set a ceiling on linemen salaries that was “nowhere close to industry standards.”

Gillett said he and others brought information to City Administrator Zack Thorington, but Gillett felt their concerns were “completely disregarded.” He said Thorington told the group that lineman wages were “severely over inflated.”

The city was able to hire a replacement for Gillett within a matter of weeks, but that lineman later left due to personal reasons that were unrelated to wages, Thorington said in an email.

“Similar to the Police Department, wages in the local job market have increased significantly over the past several years, prompting us to reevaluate our pay scale for lineman positions to remain competitive,” he wrote.

Staff looked at the salaries offered by local electrical co-operatives, the City of Cody and fellow members of the Wyoming Municipal Power Agency and found Powell’s were “way under” the others’ starting and maximum wages, Thorington told council members on Oct. 5.

Trying to stay competitive

The city’s salary range for linemen stood at $55,367-$83,051 heading into the meeting, but at staff’s suggestion, the council bumped it to $64,117-$96,176. The bottom end of the range equates to $30.83 an hour.

They also clarified the open position by specifying that they’re seeking a journeyman lineman rather than apprentice lineman.

During the meeting, Thorington noted that the change doesn’t automatically raise the city’s budget.

“It’s just giving us the ability to advertise at a higher starting wage,” he said, “because we are getting no applicants.”

Franck said he believed the increase would get the city “close” to the wages offered by similar employers and expressed hope it would bring in more applicants.

Thorington mentioned that the city does offer a significant benefits package, including its health insurance coverage and retirement plan, which makes its overall compensation package competitive. However, Mayor John Wetzel said it can be difficult to convey that value to “somebody that doesn’t understand what benefits are when they’re young and entering the industry.”

“That’s just human nature,” he said.

Gaining traction in the search for officers

Back in August, Powell Police Chief Jim Rhea had also cited concerns about his officers’ and dispatchers’ pay lagging behind other agencies in the area. For example, troopers with the Wyoming Highway Patrol were starting at $32.99 an hour, officers with the Cody Police Department at $31.01 and Park County Sheriff’s deputies at $27.56, according to information compiled by the chief. Meanwhile, Powell police officers were starting at $24.96 an hour.

At their Aug. 3 meeting, the council bumped Powell officers’ minimum pay to $27.71 an hour — just above the sheriff’s office. The change had the effect of raising a beginning officer’s minimum salary from $51,953 to $57,638; additionally, the maximum salary for a veteran patrol officer was increased to $86,457.

Dispatchers also received a bump in starting pay, from $20.87 an hour to $22.70. That lifted the position’s minimum salary from $43,420 to $47,215.

Councilman Geoff Hovivian said the changes appeared to be “more for recruitment” and asked what the city had in place “to keep people here.”

Rhea noted that after five years, employees start receiving compensation for longevity. Further, he said current trends in policing and in the overall workforce indicate it’s better to have a payscale “geared towards encouraging people to come in and get their foot in the door, and then start immediately investing into their employment with the city.”

In an interview last week, Rhea said the bump in pay “definitely generated interest” in the department’s open positions.

After basically having no applicants between February and July, the department now has two potential officers and one potential dispatcher going through the department’s vetting process, he said; if they make it through the process, that would leave just one officer vacancy within the 26-member department.

“We’ve got some traction,” Rhea told the council.