Rising records requests, legal demands drive changes at Wenatchee City Hall

WENATCHEE — As Wenatchee’s administrative workload continues to grow in ways that are often invisible to the public, city officials last week approved a series of staffing and contract decisions that together reflect the rising cost and complexity of running the city.

During its Jan. 22 meeting, the City Council approved the creation of a new Deputy City Clerk position, a stipend for Interim City Administrator and Police Chief Edgar Reinfeld, and a new multi-year contract for city attorney services — three separate actions tied together by a common theme: more work, more legal exposure, and more pressure on a small administrative staff.

City staff said the new Deputy City Clerk position is being driven largely by a sharp increase in public records requests and the legal risk that comes with failing to meet strict response deadlines. During the discussion, councilmembers focused in part on keeping the net budget impact as low as possible, ultimately landing on a plan that uses savings from the city’s recent decision to end its private security contract at the Wenatchee Rescue Mission to offset much of the cost.

Under that plan, about $60,000 in savings would be redirected to the new position, leaving a net impact of roughly $20,000.

Councilmembers also approved a stipend for Reinfeld, who has been serving as interim city administrator in addition to his role as police chief. The stipend, set at 15 percent of the administrator’s salary, amounts to about $2,470 per month, or roughly $29,600 per year, and is intended to recognize the additional workload he has carried during the city’s ongoing search for a permanent administrator. City officials noted that even with the stipend, the arrangement remains significantly less expensive than hiring a full-time administrator.

The council also approved a new four-year contract for city attorney services, a decision that Finance Director Brad Posenjak introduced with a bit of humor.

“As you all know, I’m normally practically perfect in every way,” Posenjak told the council, before explaining that an earlier agenda report contained errors and that the updated contract figures were the correct ones.

The new contract totals $960,000 for the first year, with 5 percent increases each year after that, and runs through 2029.

“This is a 7.9 percent increase over the prior contract, which really reflects the increased number of hours that the city attorney has been having to spend on our public records requests, on code enforcement actions and prosecution time and the civil work that they do for us,” Posenjak said. “It’s just across the board, it’s a bigger lift than it has been in the past.”

Posenjak told the council the higher cost is tied directly to workload, not just rates, and that the contract allows for a significant increase in the number of hours the city’s attorneys can provide.

He also noted that the $960,000 figure is already built into the city’s 2026 budget, because the council had discussed the cost earlier during budget adoption.

Taken together, the three decisions offer a snapshot of how Wenatchee’s government is being stretched not only by visible growth and development, but by the less visible demands of regulation, legal compliance, and administrative oversight.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media