Since September 2023, the City of Port Townsend has spent well over a half a million dollars with Robert Half, a global, business consulting firm that specializes in placing temporary finance and accounting professionals.

According to city records, those funds, totaling $579,573 through June 2, or roughly $8,000 a week, have gone for two contract employees — a finance director, as termed by Half for the payscale and level of expertise, and a payroll position earning $107.92 an hour and $84.55 an hour respectively. 

The city classifies the finance director as a senior accountant, said Jodi Adams, the city’s finance director. Half “provide[s] the services of accounting and payroll as well as finishing projects that were delayed by having those vacancies, and training for our current staff,” she said. “These are skills that we either do not currently have on staff, or our employees have a full-time job already and are not able to absorb the additional workload.” 

Adams said the city had been “actively recruiting” and noted that the overall expense of the city’s internal finance department has been reduced while it used Half. She also noted that “a good portion of this is offset by the salary and benefit savings we have from those vacant positions in the finance department.” The general fund budget summary indicates the finance department budget is down about $244,000. 

The city has been advertising for a financial manager since February. 

It recently began advertising for a payroll administrator after that person, hired in early January, gave notice. 

Richard Gould, the city’s previous financial manager, left in March for a job as director of finance for the city of Edmonds. He had worked for the city for about 18 months and earned $126,484 annually when he departed. Adams, who earns $147,825 a year, began working for the city on April 1, 2024. 

In addition to Adams salary, the department employs a finance specialist at $72,800 another finance specialist at $68,577, a payroll administrator at $79,019, a utility billing and collections specialist at $59,820 and a public records officer position at $104,374, bringing finance department salaries, outside of Robert Half employees, to $532,415. 

Reluctantly retained 

An email from Connie Anderson, who served as the city’s finance director from March 2022 to January 2024, indicate the intention to use Half as part of a “temporary” agreement.  

“This looks like it is probably a 30-day commitment, as they require 30 days’ notice prior to end date,” Anderson wrote in a Sept. 13, 2023 email. 

On Sept. 19, Anderson expanded the tenure to three to six months, with the caveat that, “I do not know if this is an over or under estimate at this time.” Anderson also wrote that was “well under the 12 month cutoff for the CBA,” referring to the Collective Bargaining Agreement. 

Anderson added that initial work she wanted the accountant to help with was catching up on bank reconciliation and month end journal entries, which were behind by one year at that time. 

By December 2023, a series of emails between City Manager John Mauro and Anderson outline concerns about continuing contracts with Robert Half and bringing those contracts under Mauro’s $75,000 signing authority.

“As you know, I’ll have the authority to sign once we create parity between the code and the purchasing policy … “Can we talk sometime soon about bidding requirements and needed authorization for signing contracts? Sounds like we need another one for general services (and perhaps the annual report) under my signing authority,” Mauro wrote to Anderson.

Subsequent emails indicate that city staff shared other concerns. Cynthia Shaffer, director of human resources for Port Townsend, had flagged the hire.

“I am OK with this if John is, and only on an interim basis,” wrote Shaffer on Jan. 22, 2024. “If we move forward with this individual I would like to know the amount of time it takes to process our payroll.”  

Present day

Adams and Mauro were first contacted about this story by The Leader on June 2.  The Leader followed up with Mauro on Monday, June 9, at 4 p.m. Mauro replied to questions about the use of the Half team, noted his reply was coming on short notice with a looming city council meeting, but that he could make several points. 

He wrote that the city initially contracted the firm in 2023, which “adhered to our purchasing policy and bidding guidelines that were checked by both Finance and Legal teams.”

Other points included recruiting challenges, that use of an outside accounting firm like Half is commonplace for municipalities, that there had been savings in terms of staff salaries, and that a supplemental financial statement had been given to city council for the June 9 meeting. 

Specifically, Mauro addressed “the challenges finding qualified candidates are being exacerbated by our housing availability and attainability issues — and this seems to grow more significant each year,” which he termed a “need/value” equation. 

An humans resources staff member said job postings were published in area newspapers, government and professional websites, and on Indeed. 

The payroll position is not in the union, he said. “Similarly, the consultant providing the senior accountant level of work functions in an FLSA exempt capacity and provides support for a position that is not part of the union,” wrote Mauro. 

Working with an organization like Half “helps us pair ongoing city operations and many of the statutory requirements of our Finance team with city strategic planning initiatives.” 

The city manager also noted that city council was presented with a supplemental budget at its June 9 meeting, which he noted was the latest in a process.  

The budget figures for the city finance department were provided to city council during its regular business meeting on May 19. It shows the budget for Robert Half was increased from $15,000 to $100,000. There were several updates to the supplemental budget provided to city council at the June 19 meeting, but the amount budgeted for Half hadn’t changed. 

The city manager has a $75,000 cap on spending without city council approval. As an ongoing contract, the weekly pay to Robert Half for use of its employees doesn’t need additional approval.

Council responds

The Leader reached out to city staff about this story on June 2. Members of the Port Townsend City Council were sent request for comment on Monday, June 9, at 4 p.m. with a deadline for 10 a.m.Tuesday. Amy Howard, deputy mayor, and council members Owen Rowe and Monica MickHager did not reply by presstime. 

Here are replies from council members who replied by deadline: 

BEN THOMAS 

Oh, dear. I hate that I haven’t been tenacious enough regarding the budget. I had always planned focus on budget deep dives in my second term. There’s a lot to it and we’ve gone through three different finance directors, which has made it feel murkier since they each operate differently —understandably so. But my answer is that I didn’t realize we had an ongoing consultant relationship with Robert Half. I know it’s been a struggle to meet the skilled staffing needs, but obviously we should always prefer to have in-house positions staffed by locals.

MAYOR DAVID FABER

Off the top of my head, it does indeed sound familiar to me, yes, but I cannot give you any specifics without having time to check the record and confirm for certain any details at all. I’m straight up out of time to actually do that before presstime. You waited until way too late to ask me for this week’s paper. If you can’t ask a question before the end of the day on Saturday, nine times out of ten I will not be able to respond to you with any detail. 

NEIL NELSON 

As a businessman in the community I would say I am not aware of Haft by name. I know the city uses temps in planning, public works, and finance. All of these are great ways for the city to leverage staff time and get better bang for our buck. As a customer of the planning department I was recently offered the use of an outside temp for permit review if my client was willing to pay the related additional expense. What a great win-win — the customer gets expedited services if will to pay costs, removes burden from planning dept and keeos our staffing requirements lower at a time when in house labor is expensive.  I think we should consider as much use of temp work as makes sense.

LIBBY WENNSTROM 

Like many Washington cities, Port Townsend has struggled with hiring and retaining staff for a number of years, in part because of the high cost and low availability of workforce housing.  

The city uses contracted resources to supplement regular staff for a variety of roles and special projects across multiple City departments; this is neither unusual nor unexpected.  Communications Director Leavens and Finance Director Adams are both better resources to answer questions about details on specific contracts; Council approves the overall budget. 

As always, giving staff adequate time to respond to specific inquiries is helpful in getting more complete responses. 

As I’m sure you already know, overall budget for the City’s Finance Department for 2025 is down 3.3% from what was budgeted for 2024, and actual 2024 expenses were $243,836 lower than 2024 budget. I’m sure you’ll want to highlight those cost savings in your article.