EXCELSIOR SPRINGS – City workers will receive a 3% cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, to their wages, starting in March. The City Council approved the COLA Feb. 7 at the Hall of Waters. Because of hiring issues, the city commissioned a study conducted in 2021 by the McGrath Human Resources Group in Wonder Lake, Illinois, City Manager Molly McGovern stated in a Jan. 25 memo and repeated before the vote. “Departments were beginning to experience difficulty in hiring qualified applicants for police officers, dispatchers, paramedics and maintenance workers in an environment where workers throughout the region were experiencing difficulty,” McGovern wrote. “We were seeing several employers making wage adjustments to secure the personnel they needed.” The city tried to hire employees at 10% less than the minimum salary to meet our staffing needs, she said. McGrath proposed the across-the-board COLA increase, “with additional increases as...