Nampa officials lay out pay and retention plan as HR warns city may fall behind peers

Nampa's workforce development director told the council the city is working to shore up pay and benefits to retain employees amid rising health-care and labor costs.

"I am concerned," Peter McFersonen said, summarizing the HR office's view of compensation prospects for the next one to three years. McFersonen presented multi-year turnover data that showed roughly 8% turnover among full-time staff and about 20% for part-time employees in the most recent period, and said the department is tracking trends back to fiscal 2022.

McFersonen said HR has added a dedicated compensation and data position (Chris Aer) to do city-to-city wage benchmarking and to identify pay grades that have "decayed" relative to inflation. "We want to review and enhance our compensation and benefits package to ensure that we are competitive with our fellow municipal governments," he said.

The department proposed a mix of approaches rather than a single fix: targeted increases for positions and departments that have funding capacity, annual job-description reviews, use of salary-savings where available for retention purposes, and a revised health-care offering intended to reduce premium costs for some employees while limiting overall city expense growth. McFersonen told council the city will continue its annual benchmarking of neighboring jurisdictions and said the new analyst will expand those comparisons.

Council members pressed for specifics on comparisons with nearby municipalities; McFersonen said HR is collecting data on Meridian, Caldwell and Idaho Falls and will provide detailed differentials by department when available. He also told the council that some public-works and critical-infrastructure classifications are of particular concern for competitive pay.

Next steps: HR will deliver more detailed benchmarking results and department-level recommendations as the budget process moves toward July workshops and the September county filing deadline.