City employee wages was the topic of discussion at Tuesday night’s Bellville City Council meeting during the budget workshop segment.  The discussion began picking up from the previous budget workshop where an additional employee for city hall had been debated.  This meeting Councilwoman Betty Hollon suggested taking the money that was being ear marked for an additional employee and dispersing it amongst the city departments to bring employees wages more in line with today’s needs.  One example she gave was a particular employee that has been with the city for 9 years and currently makes $15.43/hr.  Another employee has been with the city for 19 years whose pay is currently $16.48/hr and another person with 19 years who makes $17.64/hr.  Councilwoman Hollon felt that the city also needed to look at the starting pay level of $14/hr. 

“Fourteen dollars in todays time, that’s hard to get someone who wants to come to work and work in the heat, work hard and to stay.  I think we’ve lost like 5 or 6 employees in the last month and a half.  I would venture to say that most of those left because of salaries.”

Discussion continued between number of staff to run city hall as well as other areas of need for the city.  It was decided to do an assessment of the salaries of the city to see how it stacks up to others in the competitive market of retaining employees as well as a review of the benefits package.

You can watch the entire budgetary discussion in the video below starting at the 00:01:50 to the 00:43:13 mark of the video.

 

Floating Vimeo Video