SPOKANE VALLEY – John Hohman city manager and John Whitehead human resources director came to council on Aug. 15 asking for some classifications to be adjusted within the city employee system.
Whitehead said he wants to see some reclassifications done in regard to employee titles.
“We believe these changes will allow us to respond more quickly and effectively to changes in the community,” Whitehead said. “Specifically, what it would do is create two new classifications.”
“One classification would be the Communications Manager, and the other would be the City Services Administrator. It would also change the title of the public information officer to a communications specialist.” he added.
According to Whitehead these changes would not add any full-time employees to the city, but just re-classify current positions.
Hohman said it will allow the city to manage their resources better.
He said this will allow them to streamline services.
“We’ve looked at our management structure, and we feel we need some additional assistance,” Hohman said. “In a very broad area of services and the new title would oversee our recording fee process and our homeless activities.”
“There are four or five of us working on that at any given time, and this would consolidate everything under one individual,” he added.
He said the communications from the city to the public could use some work as well, and combining all of the tasks under one communications specialist would benefit the city and residents.
Councilwoman Laura Padden said she can see the budget impact to be minimal since current positions are still be utilized.
“One concern is I know you had someone retire,” Padden said. “And I want to make sure that we are done with whatever they were doing.”
“I want to make this won’t come back to where we need to hire a contract person to cover what wasn’t completed,” she added.
Hohman said after doing a review they are confident that the current staff can take care of the tasks.
Councilwoman Brandi Peetz asked about the current classification compared to the presented changes.
The initial classification for the position was at 15, but new classification would jump them clear to 21.
Peetz also asked about the sliding scale fee for the positions.
Hohman was told the reclassification increases the classification for the city engineer position from level 20 to 21.
He also said the current information officer is classified at 15 and they are not looking to change that.
Hohman did not give the numbers for the position pay rates, but told councilwoman Peetz it is in the city’s matrix.
Councilman Tim Hattenburg said he feels the idea would be a good move for the city to make.
During public comment one Spokane Valley resident suggested city council hire more people, including an executive secretary that could help in terms of communication.
The resident said he feels like information is filtered before it makes it to the public.
Hohman responded, saying that information is never filtered and that the communication manager position they are suggesting would in turn take over all of the planning that goes into communication needs.
Matthew graduated from West Virginia University-Parkersburg in 2011 with a journalism degree. He's an award-winning photographer and enjoys writing stories about people.
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