Is City Staff Growing Too Fast?

To answer the question posed in the title, let us examine the data graciously supplied by the City.

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We see the City staff is growing at a 4.3% annual rate over the last 7 years. Is this appropriate?

What has been happening to the population within the City?

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It is observed that the population of Georgetown is growing at a 3.3% annual rate over the last 10 years.

A logical question would be is: why is the City staff growing at a faster rate than the population? Unless there are major new functions added to the City, why would the employee count grow faster than population?

One might argue that the uptick in employment in 2015 was caused by the acquisition of Chisholm Trail water district and the establishment of the Emergency Medical Services(EMS). However, those functions are fully integrated and incorporated, and the employee growth rate is 1% greater annually than population growth.

If the City staff had grown at the same rate over the past 7 years as the population, 3.3%, the City would have 48 fewer employees on the payroll.

Perhaps its time to bring City employee growth rate in line with City population growth rate.