No labor shortage… yet

When the city council hit the agenda item this week to decide on whether or not to declare a critical labor shortage in order to expand the potential pool of candidates for the vacant position of city manager to include retirees already receiving a Nevada state Public Employees Retirement System pension, the discussion was short.

After City Attorney Brittany Walker ran through an explanation of the law and noted that, at the root, council had the ability to basically say, “There is a critical labor shortage because we say there is one,” as long as individual members of the council were okay with putting their name and vote on a resolution claiming that certain conditions had been met (and noting that once the declaration was made, no state authority was going to question it), councilmember Cokie Booth spoke first.

Noting that she had researched the issue in her spare time, she said that, “When this was passed, some members of the Legislature expressed some concern that the process might be misused.”

She then went on to list her reasons for thinking that a declaration, at this point in time, would be a misuse of the law. Chief among those was that, while the city has gone through six city managers and acting city managers in a period of just 12 years, the current search for a replacement for former city manager Taylour Tedder had not really begun.

Indeed, the council had just voted to hire a recruitment agency to head up that search about an hour earlier. (See related story on this page.)

And, with that, the issue that had brought on one of the most contentious council discussions since the current council was seated —a discussion that had some members of the council accusing others of being willing to “tell a little fable” —was basically dead in the water.

Councilmember Steve Walton, who had first brought the idea forward and who had championed it to a 3-2 vote to move forward with consideration in July, acknowledged that this was the kind of issue that demanded council unanimity if it were to move forward.

After Mayor Joe Hardy noted that one of the nuances of the law was that the council had to make findings (which do not have to actually be supported by data) in order to invoke the law, he asked if any council members had any written findings to present.

“I appreciate the conversation we have been able to have,” Walton said. “I think it is important to look into the doors that legislation leaves open and then to decide if it is the right thing at the right time. If council has a degree of discomfort with the intent or what we’re putting out there coming from the city, I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

And that was the end of the discussion.

With no findings to present or debate, there was no resolution needed and no vote taken.

In the end, it was a creative idea for solving an intractable problem (the difficulty small towns have in recruiting talent who will stick around for a longer term).

Those few council members who spoke on the merits (Councilmembers Matt Fox and Sherri Jorgensen, both of whom had supported the idea the last time it was voted on, remained silent on the issue) did express a willingness to revisit the idea if the upcoming search for a city manager was not fruitful after a period of several months.