BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Members of the Keystone Heights budget and finance committee talked about salaries for city employees and the need to stop the exodus of city workers due to low wages.
Mayor Nina Rodenroth said that during the last half of 2023, the municipality lost many workers, leaving city hall severely understaffed when new city manager Charlie Van Zan took over in 2024.
“We had a failure in things like maintaining our agendas, our minutes, our website, lack of follow up on phone calls, lack of email follow up, somebody at the front desk,” the mayor said. “We didn’t have events that we could offer because we didn’t have staffing that could support them. So that’s kind of a failure to the community. I think the community wants us to do things. They want events, and I think that we have to look at how we can do a better job and fix that.”
Rodenroth added that personnel costs should comprise 60% of the city budget. However, only 40% of the municipality’s budget was dedicated to staffing last year.
