City departments weigh in on lack of staffing

Although the Yuma City Council approved a pay raise for all city employees in January, leaders of every department wanted to make it clear why they need those raises on the final day of the city council retreat.

Many of the city department leaders that spoke at the retreat Tuesday said they are concerned they cannot fill their open positions due to low pay.

The City of Y uma human resources department’s statistics back this argument, illustrating 88 employees left in 2018. 72.7 percent of those employees left voluntarily, according to the City of Yuma’s human resources.

As we’ve been reporting for months, both Y uma fire and police have trouble recruiting and retaining employees.

YPD lost 19 officers voluntarily, according to human resources.

It is also something Mayor Doug Nicholls said on day one of the retreat that will be a top priority when it comes to approving the budget.

Chief John Lekan, who will be retiring in the coming months, expressed just how the shortage of staff is affecting the agency and the city.

“Basically, our staffing is so low right now, all we’re doing. This is solely response on calls for service. So that means the days of us being proactive and actually going out on random patrol and intelligence based patrolling is non-existent,” said Chief Lekan.

Fire is also experiencing a similar issue and their calls for service increased four percent in 2018.

Jeff Kramer, the city engineer, explained some of the issues his department is seeing with hiring specialty employees.

He explained some potential new hires accept positions if they are paid more than mid-range.