The Unified Government Board of Commissioners spent nearly all of its June 4 meeting weighing the question of how to pay the workers who deliver county and city services in 2027 without forcing deep cuts or a property tax increase.

With Mayor Christal Watson and Commissioners Melissa Bynum (At-Large District 1) and Evelyn Hill (District 4) absent, Commissioner Andrew Kump (At-Large District 2) presided as mayor pro tem. The eight commissioners present approved the consent agenda and adjourned on 8-0 roll calls.

A budget built on payroll

Budget Director Reginald Lindsey told the board that personnel is the single largest expense in the city and county general funds. Thursday’s workshop was the latest step toward a July framework for budgeting. Across the two general funds, personnel runs about $200 million, and the government finished last year within $1 million of that target, Deputy Budget Director Michael Peterson said.

Human Resources Director Renee Ramirez reported an overall vacancy rate of about 8 percent as of June 1, with roughly 182 open positions. The new online hiring system has trimmed the average time to fill a job to about 95 days, down from 150 or more when the process was manual. Fill rates vary widely: fire stood near 98 percent, the district attorney’s office at 95 percent, police at 94 percent, public works at 88 percent, the sheriff at 87 percent, and the register of deeds at 100 percent.

Turnover has tracked below the national range of 15 to 18 percent, Ramirez said, though she flagged a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released June 2 that pegged the monthly separation rate for 2026 at 3.3 percent, a pace that would project a steep annual figure if it holds. Retirements from an aging workforce, pay, thin career paths, and work-life balance all feed those numbers, she said.

On sworn public safety counts, the budget supports 439 fire positions, 331 police positions, and 147 in the sheriff’s office. Fire and police are tracking near or slightly above their marks in headcount but below them in actual pay, while the sheriff’s office sits filled at 140 and paying an average of 137.

Grant-funded jobs near a cliff

Two expiring federal grants drew much of the night’s attention. A FEMA emergency response grant pays 17 firefighters and runs out in the middle of March 2027, a loss worth about $1.4 million that year and $2.3 million for a full year in 2028. A separate US Department of Justice grant covers 12 police patrol officers, with two rolling off late in 2026, six more in 2027 for an $800 thousand hit, and the final four in 2028, reaching a full-year cost near $1.5 million. The forecasts do not include either figure, Lindsey noted.

Commissioner Andrew Davis (District 8) pressed staff on whether the government forecasts the consequences of grant money running out before it applies for personnel grants. He was just as wary of the survey-linked jobs the budget office had floated. “I’m just having a hard time understanding how we would fund more vacancies if there’s existing vacancies for those departments,” Davis said. He would rather learn why current jobs sit empty, and add hiring incentives where they help, before authorizing more. He pointed to community corrections, which is fully staffed but lost a night-shift position in 2025, as the kind of request he would back.

Three paths for 2027

Lindsey walked the board through three scenarios for each general fund, each keyed to the assessed value of property. Personnel makes up 69 percent of the roughly $98 million county general fund and 78 percent of the roughly $188 million city general fund, so small swings carry large costs.

A revenue-neutral budget, holding property tax revenue flat, would leave the county about $3.4 million in the red and the city about $3.6 million, and would keep the county from approving a budget as soon as 2028. A 4 percent rise in assessed value, the staff’s preliminary estimate, narrows the county gap to roughly $890 thousand and the city gap to $1.9 million, yet still points to negative balances in the early 2030s. Balancing the budgets outright would take roughly a 5 percent increase on the county side and an 8.6 percent revenue increase on the city side, lifting reserves but still leaving the county near 6 percent and the city near 17 percent, both far short of the government’s 25 percent fund balance policy.

Commissioner Carlos Pacheco (District 5) asked where the cuts would land under a revenue-neutral plan. “I think that’s what the public really needs to understand,” he said. Staff said they had not identified specific reductions, but that history points to frozen vacancies first, followed by cuts to services and capital. Peterson said capital spending has been held so low for so long that little remains to cut there. “Most likely we’d be looking at service reductions that would have to include personnel cost,” he said.

Pay, parity, and merit

Ramirez laid out a slate of compensation ideas, all carrying a price tag. The government has not run a full compensation study since 2015, when many job classifications were found to sit below market. She also returned to a 2014 decision that swapped merit-based performance reviews for evaluations meant only to spur conversation, a change she said does little to drive performance when no pay rides on it. It is “really really important for us to really consider re-implementing merit-based performance evaluations,” she said, describing a model that would reward employees who exceed their goals with a larger step increase.

Two other pay gaps between union and non-union staff also came up. Union contracts pay about $75 a month for bilingual work, while Ramirez noted that non-union staff, “have no plan to compensate them for their bilingual skills, yet they’re using those skills every day,” in a county she called the most diverse in Kansas. Non-union employees also miss out on the education pay many union members receive. The government, she said, must “stop being the training ground for other organizations who are providing these things to their employees.”

The recent lifting of the residency requirement may provide some relief, if it makes hiring easier. The government carries about 32 incentive plans and paid out roughly $503 thousand on them from 2023 through 2026. Some sign-on, retention, and referral bonuses may no longer be needed. A market survey will be done before recruiting a new fire chief, meant to keep pay parity among the fire chief, police chief, sheriff, and district attorney.

Survey priorities meet frozen jobs

Senior Budget Analyst Adrian Alemifar tied the staffing picture to the government’s community survey, a connection several commissioners welcomed as a first. On the county side, residents ranked the property appraisal process, public safety, and motor vehicle services as their top priorities, all areas where positions were frozen in the 2025 and 2026 budgets. City respondents flagged street maintenance, property maintenance, economic development, animal and police services, abandoned-vehicle enforcement, storm water management, and graffiti removal as important but under-served. Among shared services, four parks and recreation measures slipped in satisfaction even as most ratings rose.

Commissioner Phil Lopez (District 6) urged staff to look inside its own ranks to fill two open grant-writer roles. He pointed to a health department employee, hired into a different job, who had applied to write grants. “He’s already here. We just got to put him in the right spot,” Lopez said.

The personnel budget workshop was for information only. The next phase, on capital projects, comes at the end of June.

On the consent agenda

The board approved the consent agenda without setting aside a single item. One authorized a mutual aid agreement with the KCMO Police for the 2026 World Cup matches and related events from June through July. Another adopted the regional fare resolution for RideKC transit. A third accepted a $75 thousand Health Forward Foundation grant to staff the housing piece of the county’s 2024-2028 Community Health Improvement Plan.

The fare resolution ties UG Transit to the regional fare framework shared by KCATA, Johnson County Transit, Unified Government Transit, and the KC Streetcar on both sides of the state line.

Under the structure that returned June 1, a single local ride costs $2, up from the $1.50 charged before the region went fare-free. Transfers go away entirely, but the framework puts daily, weekly, and monthly fare capping in their place. Riders who pay the same way each time, by contactless card, phone, or a reloadable smart card, never spend more than a pass would cost.