The Austin City Council is still committed to a $565,000 levy increase for next year to pay for more city employees.

The council preliminarily approved four new positions for the city’s police and parks and recreation departments during a work session Monday while reviewing budget proposals.

Council members decided to fund a new police officer, a new detective, a Jay C. Hormel Nature Center employee and a new parks and recreation department worker with the levy increase. City staff would hire the nature center and parks employees midway through 2016 to save money.

Yet the council could add a new fire inspector after Fire Chief Jim McCoy and Council Member Jeremy Carolan, a volunteer firefighter, made their case to council members. McCoy said the inspector’s department was “years” behind in making sure commercial areas, multi-unit properties and specialized buildings such as day cares were up to fire code. The fire department has two part-time inspectors.

Regardless, the council is looking to staff up to meet increasing community needs.

“We’ve been putting a lot of these things off for years and years and years,” Mayor Tom Stiehm said.

It appears the council would fund the fire position in 2017 if it doesn’t pass this year, though McCoy said the department could possibly secure a federal grant to partially fund an inspector position for two years.

The council looks to increase the city’s levy by $565,000 — or about 13 percent — to about $4.9 million next year.

That increase looks a lot bigger than it actually is, according to city staff. The city will receive about $140,000 in new taxes from the Holiday Inn area, which has a tax increment finance district set to expire at the end of this year. That will cover about 3 percent of the increased levy.

In addition, about 2 to 3 percent of taxes usually comes from new commercial and residential properties, which means a 6 to 7 percent increase is what will actually show up on tax bills next year.

Finance Director Tom Dankert said the increase could translate to about a $24 hike in property taxes for homeowners on average, though specific residential property estimates won’t be available until December.

The increases come as the council faces mounting pressure to keep up with the city’s growth.

The levy proposal as is would fund three new city positions for about $225,000 and put another $200,000 toward agreed-upon wage and benefit increases for employees next year.

Most city staff have a 2 percent cost of living increase set for 2016, while police officers and police supervisors, who negotiate their contracts separately, will negotiate with the city for their increases.

The city also plans to set aside the additional $140,000 from the TIF district for capital projects and potential Vision 2020 requests.

Funding woes

Not all funding requests may be approved, however. Though the council plans to maintain its current funding for outside organizations requesting donations, council members aren’t keen to give a proposed $10,000 grant to the Mower County Historical Society.

Historical Society Executive Director John Haymond made his case to the council earlier this year, but some council members still expressed concern about the $10,000 request.

“It’s a county thing,” Council member Jeff Austin said. “The county should be the ones funding this.”

Austin had previously served on the historical society’s board of directors.

Yet the council tabled the historical society’s request until its Aug. 17 meeting to ponder how much the nonprofit should receive.

“We may not give them $10,000, but we should give them something,” Council member Janet Anderson said.

In addition, the city may put off a $25,000 classification and compensation study for a few years. While the study helps determine pay equity among cities, it also creates issues for city staff once the study finds which positions are over- and underpaid.

“There’s no city that I’ve talked to that freezes those employees to help bring underpaid employees up,” Dankert told the council.

The study could end up costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run, according to city officials, as the city’s labor groups use the study results to bolster their negotiations for better wages.

By the same token, it’s been more than two decades since the city completed a similar study, and the practice would help city staff meet job review recommendations from the state, according to City Administrator Craig Clark.