The Kent City Council took a rare step of approving new city positions midway through a year rather than during the annual budget deliberations that begin in the fall and conclude in December.
The council approved last month to spend $545,000 annually to fund four new full-time positions for the informational technology (IT) department. The council approved the hires as part of its consent calendar, which means the items are considered noncontroversial by the council and are approved without any discussion.
The new hires will include a business system administrator; a systems and integration development manager; a project manager/business analyst; and a trainer.
IT Director Mike Carrington requested the positions initially through the mayor’s office and in front of the council’s Operations Committee, whose members Bill Boyce, Les Thomas and Dana Ralph approved the hires and sent the proposal to the full council.
“We feel that we are critically understaffed and have been since recession-related cuts began in 2009 and 2010,” Carrington said to the committee.
Carrington said that national studies show that in a IT department of an organization Kent’s size, there should be approximately 41 employees for IT support. The new hires will push the department to 29 full-time employees.
Without the additional hires, IT lacks the staff to begin $2.5 million in capital reserve projects in the department’s fund, Carrington said. Those projects need staff to help with building, buying, testing, deploying, training, maintaining and operating the resulting systems.
The city will use funds from its cable utility tax to pay for the new hires. The council in 2012 approved a 6 percent tax on cable utility bills to help fund IT projects. The tax brings in about $1.5 million per year. The account has the funds to cover the new employees.
Carrington said he plans to ask for six more positions in the 2017-18 budget to help get projects done.
Thomas initially voiced concerns about hiring mid-year and that other departments might want to do the same. Boyce said if there is work that needs to be done, the department needs the staff to do it.
Derek Matheson, city chief administrative officer, told the committee that he had doubts at first about the request because it’s the middle of the year. He said Mayor Suzette Cooke had similar reservations.
“The light bulb went on for me when I thought about public works, and if we had money to spend on transportation and utilities, we would need engineers to move forward,” Matheson said about IT needing more staff to get projects done.
During budget deliberations in December, the council approved $1 million to IT projects from the city’s internal utility tax. The internal utility tax is when the city taxes the revenue from its water, sewer and storm drainage funds. The funds are known as enterprise funds because all or most of the costs are paid for by user fees. As long as the city’s utility funds are in solid financial shape, city officials use that money to cover other costs.
IT will spend about $550,000 of that $1 million allocation on two projects – a content management system for the city’s new website and a citywide contract and document work flow management system, according to city documents. Those projects are separate from the $2.5 million IT capital reserve fund.
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