The city of Sedona paid its employees over $7,780,420 in just nine months, from the start of Fiscal Year 2022 last July until mid-April, but 17 employees who together earned over $1.5 million in just nine months — or the cost to design one Uptown parking garage.

Based on city records from July 1, 2021, through April 11, 2022, these 17 employees are all salaried above $100,000 annually. Most of these positions, listed on Page 6A, are administrative city positions. Out of all these posi­tions, the department with the most positions making at least $100,000 are those in the City Manager’s Office.

Jackson, Wyo., a town of just over 10,000 residents with median home prices around $3 million only has 12 town employees paid over six figures this fiscal year. Set right in front of the gate to Grand Teton National Park, the town pays its 12 top salaried indi­viduals $1.5 million altogether for the entire 12-month fiscal year.

Cottonwood, a city of over 12,000 residents and median home prices in the mid-$400,000s, has 20 employees with a six-figure salary. Two of those are the city’s fire chief and fire marshal; the Sedona Fire District is a govern­ment separate from the city of Sedona.

For the previous fiscal year in Sedona, there were only 14 posi­tions paid at or over $100,000 annually. This increase can be attributed to both raises and new positions added to the city, like the transit administrator and deputy police chief. These 14 positions took home $1.6 million of the $8,907,650 overall payroll spending for the city’s entire year in FY 2020-21.

Based on the city staff’s earned amount from July to April, Sedona will be spending around $9.8 million in total staff payroll this year, nearly a million over last year. But for all three Sedona, Cottonwood and Jackson, the city manager, deputy/assistant city manager, city attorney and chief of police are all paid above six figures annually.

The Sedona city manager, the highest-paid position for the city of Sedona, received a $51,000 salary increase, or 32% pay increase, in just four years based on the FY 2021-22 salary and FY 2018-19 gross earnings.

In comparison, the town of Jackson increased its town manager’s salary by 8% in those four years from $150,800 to the current $163,990. The city of Cottonwood’s city manager, who has been in the position since January 2019, makes $163,922 in earned wages for the year, which is a 4% increase in 4 years.

For city attorney, Cottonwood’s highest paid employee, the posi­tion receives a $202,000 annual salary. For Jackson, the city attorney received a significant pay decrease in the past four years from $165,000 annually to the current $131,900. This puts Sedona’s city attorney salary in the middle.

Cottonwood paid its deputy city manager $6,000 more than their city manager. This accounts for a 7% increase for the position, while Jackson pays its assistant city manager $162,250 with an 8% pay increase since 2018.

In the past four years, the police chief position received a 13% pay increase in Cottonwood and a 11% pay increase in Jackson. Cottonwood currently salaries its chief at $147,000 annually, while Jackson sets their chief at $131,968.75 annually. In Sedona, the police chief received a 27% pay increase within the past four years to $138,008, but the pay stays competitive with the other two cities.

The city of Sedona does salary market comparison every few years. According to city staff, salary comparisons, performance, inflation and cost of living most heavily influence city employee’s wages for the fiscal year.

“The reality is that because we are serving far more than a population of 9,600 residents with a greater breadth and depth of services and issues, and because our competition for experience and talent is found in larger communities with higher wages, we include those larger cities, towns, counties throughout AZ when we determine where our wages need to be set to be competitive,” City Manager Karen Osburn wrote.

In their salary comparisons, the city of Sedona looks at salaries in Glendale, Peoria, Phoenix, Tempe, Cottonwood, Prescott and many more in Arizona.

While many the city’s highest paid positions have been added into the city staff roster in the past four years, like the Deputy City Manager, other positions like Assistant City Manager and Deputy City Manager have been split into two separate positions from an initial Assistant City Manager job. But it is the other positions like Human Resource Manager and Chief Building Official that have just simply received pay increases to an annual six-figure salary.

Despite the rise in the overall payroll budget in the past four years, the city’s average full-time salary sits at around $44,400 a year in a city where the median household income in the city is $57,434 according to the 2020 U.S. Census.

“We routinely lose candidates because they cannot afford to live here, not just in Sedona, but anywhere in Northern Arizona, for what we can offer to pay them and what the cost of living is, compared to what they can make and the lower cost of living in the Phoenix metro area (amongst others),” Osburn wrote.