SAN ANTONIO — After surveying 5,000 of the city’s civilian employees, city leaders say one of the employees’ top priorities was getting vacancies filled. The City of San Antonio is laying out a plan to accomplish that.
In last week’s FY 2023 budget presentation, city manager Erik Walsh proposed raising the starting wage of city employees up to $17.50 an hour from the current $15.60 per hour wage. Walsh said his son makes more money than city employees by bagging groceries and retrieving shopping carts.
All employees will also get a market rate adjustment of at least 2%, including a 5% market rate adjustment across the board. Employee benefits will also improve with a 20% healthcare premium reduction.
“We want to make sure that we hire, we recruit, and we retain folks. We’ve seen a jump in our voluntary turnover earlier in the year because it’s an employee’s market,” Walsh said last week after the budget presentation.
City staff say the average number of applications they receive per job posting has dropped 57%.
The vacancy rate for the city is currently at 9.6%, during the height of the pandemic, the rate was between 11% and 12% and pre-pandemic it was 7.6%.
Council members supported a wage increase and were hopeful the recruitment efforts will attract homeless outreach coordinators. Council members Dr. Adriana Rocha Garcia and Phyllis Viagran expressed concern they were losing the coordinator for their districts.
“The homeless coordinators are one of probably 250 examples in different job classes, so they’re obviously a critical part. So are the 911 dispatchers, the folks taking care of the airport…we are working quickly to fill all positions as quickly as possible,” Walsh told reporters.
The city says it will be providing a more detailed breakdown of the employee compensation at its work session next week.