Prior Lake City Hall is located at 4646 Dakota St. SE.
Prior Lake city leaders are looking ahead to filling critical needs in city staffing for the next five years.
Assistant city manager Lori Olson presented an overview of the city’s personnel needs at the city council’s work session on Tuesday, May 13, and highlighted two pressing areas of need: public safety and information technology.
Between 2026 and 2030, the city will look to add five full-time patrol officers and a sergeant-level position, according to the report. A workload study found adding this many patrol officers would cover the minimum requirements for staffing — a level that is not currently met — and would help relieve the time strain on the current sergeants, who contribute about 2,000 hours of primary and backup call response.
The workload study summarized the situation: “For the PLPD, it is evident that its patrol supervisors have been relegated to a de facto patrol role, all but eliminating their ability to perform the more complex and intended role they are assigned.”
The work by Chief Liam Duggan and his staff to make scheduling more efficient has resulted in enough savings to hire one additional officer in 2025 without a budget increase. Duggan also noted in the work session that the hiring and training process for officers takes months.
The city’s personnel plan also calls for the addition of an administrative assistant and another records specialist for the police department, both in full-time roles. The department doesn’t currently have a dedicated administrative assistant, leaving those duties to department leaders, while changes to data practices and laws at the state level has left the records team understaffed.
The fire department reorganized into a full-time force in 2025, and this new model has resulted in more efficiency and reduced call time. However, the department has become the primary responder for all medical calls, causing a need to add three firefighters in 2028. The addition will allow better 24-hour coverage as the city grows, according to the city’s report.
“Clearly the message [of the report] to our citizens can be summed up in two words: public safety,” Mayor Kirt Briggs said. “When you call 911, you need an immediate response, and trained staff to handle your emergency.”
IT needs
Future public safety needs are also a factor in the city’s need to bolster its IT staff, but the department is already stretched thin.
Olson’s report said the city will look to add a network administrator in 2026. This would bring Prior Lake up to three full-time equivalent employees in the department, closer to the average of 3.5 FTEs for comparable cities.
The two-person department’s IT specialist was the primary handler of 1,100 help desk requests in 2024, along with maintaining the phone system, system security training and printers. Everything else falls to the IT manager, including support for the city’s 1,300 devices.
The report notes a “major reason” for the needed help is the police department, with the “evolving technology related to law enforcement … and, more importantly, unfunded CJIS (criminal justice information services) security mandates from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”
According to the report, Prior Lake’s public works department, currently the largest city department, had an accelerated timeline in implementing staffing increases near the end of last year into this year. Therefore, no need for a staffing increase in the next few years exists.
Further action will be taken by the city council at an upcoming meeting, as the group works on the budget.