Memorandum

City of Lawrence

City Manager’s Office

TO:	Cynthia Boecker, Assistant City Manager Casey Toomay, Budget Manager
FROM:	Megan Dodge, Management Intern
DATE:	July 11, 2008
RE:	Staffing level survey of other communities

In response to a request from City Commissioners to compare staffing levels for peer communities by department, staff contacted local governments to collect full-time equivalent (FTE) staffing levels in the ten largest communities in Kansas, as well as fifteen cities nationwide.  The fifteen cities were identified by City Auditor Michael Eglinski, based on specific characteristics they share with Lawrence:

• surrounded by land with low population density;
• urban population of almost 90,000;
• population of about 15,000 under the age of 18;
• per capita income of about $21,000; and,
• half of the housing built since 1978. 

Because of the volume of information collected and the complexities to the analysis, this continues to be a work in progress.

Data was collected from city budget documents posted online, in addition to contacting cities for follow-up questions or when their budget documents did not include FTE breakdowns.  Cities are organized in varying ways, and thus report their information in different ways.  Divisions and departments function or are named differently in other cities than in Lawrence; thus it was sometimes necessary make assumptions when recording data.

While staffing totals can be a helpful tool in comparing city departments, one should be careful when making generalizations based solely on these numbers.   During the course of the research, I realized that staffing totals vary due to a number of factors.  These factors include the fact that each community has distinct characteristics; the same goes for city departments.  For instance, I noted that a Public Works department in one government might have significantly lower or higher FTE totals that that of Lawrence because all departments perform varying responsibilities, despite sharing the same department name.  Additionally, each city department caters to the unique needs of the city it serves.  In order to successfully draw conclusions from this data, one should take into consideration community and city government differences. These differences in part determine departmental FTE totals. 

Although the survey of industry organizations is not yet complete, it is revealing that four organizations (The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the American Planning Association, the International City/County Management Association and the American Public Works Association) all reported that they do not establish recommended FTE staffing levels for city departments.  These organizations all cited differences among cities and city governments as the reasons they do not have an established recommendation.