Remarks by Kaylynn Paxson
113 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 4 of 5
- Play at 4:02:11
“Where does, hear me out here, you've answered a lot of questions on the standard operating procedures for filling that role, but in interim, to provide support to the department.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:03:01
“If we're talking about a temporary job fill, 90 days maybe, I can't imagine that going over an executive team procurement approval policy. Is there no way that? there's a service that we can temporarily hire that doesn't take the 90 days to fill the 90 days.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:04:06
“No, you're fine. I just know we lost, George, six months ago, we lost another auditor over a month ago. Now we've just lost a third. So to me, even though we got the latest resignation a week ago, we're facing some serious deficits in the department. So we're holding them to the standard of completing their audits, but we're not giving them the tools to help support that department. And it was already a very tight turnaround to lose an auditor in less than 30 days to try to pick up that workload amongst the rest of the department. So that's my issue here is getting stuck in a position where…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:05:45
“Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. Please don't mistake. This isn't directed at an individual. This is the feeling of the manifestation of a system flaw. This is not directed at an individual. But we have a hole here, and we have to fill it. Thank you.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:38:47
“How many employees are below the mean income level?”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:39:10
“I'm a huge proponent for merit and increases. However, when we're talking cost of living, we have a huge portion of our staff that every dollar counts. I think that there's, I don't think that's 100%. I think we have some disparity between tiers, but we have huge portions of staff. This is an organization of 4,000 people that they really need that. If you let that inflation and those healthcare costs increase and now their paychecks are decreasing because of that difference, what incentivizes them to stay with our organization? Are we increasing those wages? No. How are we supposed to get…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:40:37
“I don't think that would be like a standard application. I'm just talking in years of...”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:41:04
“I'm thinking with the disparities we have between pay codes, it would be quite a few years of that before we had that problem.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:41:22
“My question is whether we have evaluated a tiered COLA.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:42:48
“So you're saying there's still an 8% gap to overcome in the 100s, a 12% in the 200s? So when we looked at the market,”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:43:38
“Okay, I disagree fundamentally on that philosophy. I think that's a strategy that any organization can employ, and it doesn't have to be a standard policy to employ that strategy in years of a tighter budget. And especially when we're looking at a 12% gap at the 100s, adding a 3% there, 8% gap at the 200s, and a 1% there, that still leaves a fair gap between those two ranges.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:44:27
“I see. That wasn't clear earlier. Thank you, Michael, for clarifying that. Okay. So since we're still talking about item four, we said that 820K is less than half of 1% of our budget. For 39 departments, less than half of 1%. I don't know, I think anybody who has run an organization has had seasons where you go to your different departments and you say, we're in the next budget cycle. I want a 5% reduction, present your budget. And I realized that we've cut a lot back to overcome that 1.9 million, but we're talking less than half of 1%. So I'm still frustrated that that wasn't, you know, even…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:15:20
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:16:08
“Yes, but if we had that savings in hotel occupancy tax, there's so much more in the general fund we could put back. It would slide things over because we cover a lot of costs, a lot of costs from hot tax. And if we got that hot tax back, we could put it back in the general fund.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:16:26
“Hot tax can go to a number of things. Hot tax can go to lifeguards. Hot tax can go to those operations we have on shoreline. We have a designated area that goes to that. Hot tax can go to a lot of different things that we pay general fund for. We do consolidations of multiple budgets to get things done. We just spent days. Michael Rodriguez, we looked over a lot of this stuff.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:16:56
“It's still a budget savings that we could reallocate with, is my point.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:17:03
“I don't know the exact number. I think it was 500,000, and I'm not advocating we take it from there, that our city manager had, and I think you gave it up last year because you were trying to close that gap.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:17:15
“This is not, in my opinion, an attack on anyone. We want our employees to be raised. They should be raised to that minimum. When I found out that we had staff members that were making $13 an hour, I was deeply upset by that. That is difficult to live off of, almost impossible. This is not advocating to suffer any of those. A merit-based pay increase makes sense. A lot of organizations do that. That is separate from a COLA. That is separate from bringing them up to standard. But the comments that this is holding them hostage is not fact. We have a huge organizational budget. I have done it…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:19:05
“I think I have freedom of speech, Madam Mayor.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:19:34
“It works both ways. It would start with allowing me to have my comments, period. I have every right to speak with anybody up here, and in your next turn, you can address it.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:19:47
“Because this is getting out of hand. We're going back and forth. So let's move forward. Let's move forward. I believe I respectfully voiced my opinion and that didn't warrant an entire back and forth dialogue.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:20:07
“I think I know how to voice my opinion. Let's move on. The question is whether or not you allow me to do that.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:20:27
“no one up here needs weaponized for their own opinions if you don't want to vote on something that's your prerogative but i have every right to say hey you're advocating for it perhaps cast a vote for it anybody up i'm sorry could you stop interrupting me i would appreciate it thank you very much for that move on excuse me let's move on please finish your statement of two minutes This does not need to come to this. Everyone has a voice and an opinion and a vote, and we need to allow it to be such and move on from that. We don't need to have a bunch of accusations, upset inferences, and…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:24:18
“But it's still passed before the next fiscal budget.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:24:32
“If it needs to be done by the 15th, we call a meeting before the 15th. That's doable.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026