Council approves base-pay increase for city workers.
After two long days of deliberation, City Council gave final approval late in the evening Thursday, Aug. 18, to a $5 billion"all funds". The General Fund, which is where your sales and property taxes go, accounts for about $1.3 billion of that budget, with more than 60% of that amount earmarked for public safety.
"A $20/hr living wage will provide Austinites with reliable and high-quality city services while also enabling our public employees to live in the city they serve," Fuentes wrote in a statement following Council's adoption of the budget."High-quality city services" is a bit of a veiled reference to the dire staffing crisis facing practically every city department. Data from May shows a roughly 16% vacancy rate across all departments – about 2.
While higher starting pay will help with recruitment, pay compression will have a negative impact on employee retention, with which the city also struggles. So, HRD is going to work with department heads across the city to see how they can address pay compression. For some departments, like, they'll be able to use some of their share of the $7 million to increase pay for more employees, because many PARD jobs are seasonal but are funded for the full fiscal year.