{"id":27800,"date":"2024-05-07T23:20:36","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T23:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-raises-starting-pay-and-offers-incentives-to-attract-part-time-and-seasonal-staff\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:12:10","slug":"cortez-raises-starting-pay-and-offers-incentives-to-attract-part-time-and-seasonal-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-raises-starting-pay-and-offers-incentives-to-attract-part-time-and-seasonal-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez raises starting pay and offers incentives to attract part-time and seasonal staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lifeguards
Lifeguards are just one of the positions needing to be filled for the summer season. (Journal file photo)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

As summer nears, the Cortez Parks and Recreation Department is offering higher starting pay and incentives to help recruit and retain summer seasonal and part-time staff for summer.<\/p>\n

Starting pay ranges from $14.75 to $16.25, depending on the position. Recruitment, retention and referral incentives range from $100 to $500, depending on hours worked and the position, according to information provided by the city.<\/p>\n

The range of starting hourly pay is $14.75, $15.25, $16 and $16.25.<\/p>\n

People who start work by June 10 and work at least 80 hours by June 30 are eligible for a $200 bonus<\/p>\n

The city also is offering two other retention incentives, one for lifeguards and one for all other positions in the city.<\/p>\n

The lifeguard retention incentive starts at $150 for 100 hours worked and grows to $500 for 350 additional hours. Non-lifeguard staff can receive an incentive that starts at $100 for 100 hours worked and topping out at $250 for 350 or more hours.<\/p>\n

Existing staff who recruit a new member who works 80 hours by June 30 will receive a $200 referral incentive. Performance issues, excessive call-offs and tardiness are taken into consideration, however.<\/p>\n

The city hopes these adjustments will help attract staff to fill more than 100 part-time and summer positions. According to the city, less than 66% of these roles were filled in 2023 leading to a reduction of services and supervisors trying to over open shifts among other issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving so many unfilled positions leads to continued stagnation, falling behind on best practices, and not offering high-quality, creative opportunities for the community. The level of service in the parks and golf course is decreased, leading to complaints and delays in getting to regular maintenance tasks. Being short-staffed in the indoor and outdoor pools leads to fewer swim lessons offered to the community and cuts to the pool\u2019s operational hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe struggle to recruit and retain employees for our programs and facilities. Being short-staffed impacts the community, and I am frustrated that we can\u2019t serve the community better,\u201d said Parks and Recreation Director Creighton Wright.<\/p>\n

Wright added that hiring before the pandemic wasn\u2019t nearly as big of an issue, but the problem has grown since the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh school students and recent high school graduates make up a large portion of our labor pool, and since the pandemic, this demographic has not worked as much, thus making the pool of eager part-time staff smaller,\u201d Wright said. \u201cThis makes recruitment and retention difficult. Fewer employees means fewer programs and operational hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional retention incentives are also offered to keep staff on through the end of the year. A new employee can receive a recruitment incentive and two recruitment incentives, one for summer and one for the end of the year.<\/p>\n

The full list of available positions and qualifications can be found online<\/a> at https:\/\/www.cortezco.gov\/jobs.aspx.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Incentives are based on hours worked, referrals and more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,21,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-27800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-community","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80202,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27800\/revisions\/80202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27800"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=27800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}