Cloverdale contracts with city for HR help

City Managers across the nine Sonoma County cities are looking for ways to share services and for the first time in the north county, that collaboration is paying off.
The city of Healdsburg approved a contract agreement with the city of Cloverdale Monday night for Human Resources assistance. Cloverdale is short staffed and has a new interim City Manager so the city looked south for help.
“When Cloverdale was forced to downsize, Nina (Regor, the former City Manager) took on extra duties related to her skill set in Human Resources and finance work,” Healdsburg’s City Manager Marjie Pettus said. “When she left, it left a hole in the City Manager position, but also in Human Resources and Paul (Cayler, interim City Manager) had other priorities he needs to focus on.”
Pettus said the cities have been looking at ways to help each other out, and Cloverdale in particular, needed assistance with doing job recruitments for immediate vacancies. She said Cloverdale is able to save money by not having to hire an outside head hunter, and Healdsburg can take over the short term contract.
“It’s a contract for a year, not to exceed $20,000,” Pettus said. “When they have a need, they’ll call.”
This is the first contract the city of Healdsburg has put into place with another municipality. Pettus can foresee more of these types of arrangements put into place but says the city must be careful when collaborating on this level.
“There’s a balance we have to achieve. It’s tricky because you have to be really careful in analyzing what our capacity is. We can’t adversely impact our own operations.”
Pettus said there has been an assumption in the past that pursuing contracts with outside agencies or consultants is cheaper than doing the work in-house, but the city is finding that sometimes, it doesn’t pencil out.
“People will say we have these big salaries and benefits, what we are finding as we pursue contracts (with non-municipal agencies), is that a consultant’s hourly rate is typically higher than our hourly rate, plus there’s an overhead fee, travel and expenses.”
She said that more and more, cities are likely to work together to form agreements like the Human Resources contract with Cloverdale.
“If I need a part-time person, and Cloverdale needs a part-time person, it might be hard to get a good pool of applicants each, but if we can hire one and share costs, it could be a win-win for everybody.”