When the city of Sedona was formed in 1988, the city government had eight employees. According to the city’s latest Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for fiscal year 2022, presented to the Sedona City Council on Jan. 10, it had 166 employees. This represents an annual rate of increase of 9.3%.

For comparison, the U.S. federal government grew in size from 699,000 civilian non-postal employees in 1940 to 2,079,000 in 2014, according to the Office of Personnel Management, for an annual rate of increase of 1.48%.

In 1955, the British historian C. Northcote Parkinson published his seminal essay “Parkinson’s Law” in The Economist, in which he suggested, based on an analysis of the British civil service, that “in any public administrative department not actually at war, the staff increase … will invariably prove to be between 5.17% and 6.56%” per year. Sedona’s 9.3% rate of city staff increase is well in advance of both Parkinson’s prediction and actual federal growth.

Parkinson explained this increase as the result of two motive forces within a bureaucracy: “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals,” and “Officials make work for each other.”

The numerical growth of the Sedona city staff should also be understood in relation to the city’s variation in population. According to the city of Sedona’s official history, the city’s population in 1987 was about 9,000. The population peaked at 10,192 in the 2000 census and declined to 9,684 in the 2020 census.

In other words, when Sedona was founded, government administrators and staff made up just 0.09% of the population. Today, they represent 1.7% of the population, or would if they all lived in city limits. Many commute from neighboring communities. In the time that Sedona’s overall population increased by 7.6%, its civil servant population increased by 1,925%.

The city’s 166 employees in 2022 made it Sedona’s fourth-largest employer, and its largest non-resort employer, responsible for 2.62% of local employment. This is an increase from 2014, when it had 112 employees and ranked eighth, and from 2013, when it had 108 employees. The number of city employees actually fell from 2006, when there were 120, until 2010, when there were 100, before rebounding to their present levels.

As of Jan. 15, the city’s website listed 10 full-time and two part-time job openings. If these were to be filled, the number of city employees would rise to 178.

At the Jan. 11 work session with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce, City Manager Karen Osburn also expressed the city’s interest in taking over the tourism management functions of the chamber.

If the city were to separate from the chamber and administer these programs, intending to hire some staff equivalent to the chamber staff to carry on these functions, and the chamber’s 12 employees were to be divided equally between both organizations, the city would gain six more employees.

Councilwomen Kathy Kinsella and Jessica Williamson joined Osburn in stating that the city would likely have to hire an additional administrator to oversee this management program, bringing the total number of new employees the city would acquire through this process to seven.

Should the takeover proposal be adopted on this basis, and should the city fill all of its open positions, the total number of city employees would rise to 185.

“No attempt has been made to inquire whether departments ought to grow in size,” Parkinson concluded his 1955 analysis. “Those who hold that this growth is essential to gain full employment are fully entitled to their opinion. Those who doubt the stability of an economy based upon reading each other’s minutes are equally entitled to theirs … It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.”

For further information on Parkinson’s law and its related principles, such as the Law of Triviality, visit archive.org/details/parkinsonslawoth00park.