Bellaire fills staffing holes following investment in employee pay

“We’ve got staffing shortages here. ... That impacts staff’s ability in nearly everything we do in terms of service delivery to meet resident needs and expectations,” Bellaire Mayor Andrew Friedberg said.

Bellaire takes action

Not long after the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Bellaire experienced high turnover rates at all levels of work, Council Member Nathan Wesley said. Community development and public works were among the hardest hit, he said.

“Sometimes it meant that [the city] had to go with a contractor, ... and then sometimes everybody had to pitch in and just make it work,” Wesley said.

The city amended its FY 2021-22 budget in May to provide a 3.5% salary step increase to a majority of its full-time employees to a higher pay level since the start of their work with the city.

Bellaire operates under a 12-step plan in which full- and part-time employees are eligible, typically after six months, for a 3.5% pay increase, Bellaire Human Resources Manager Lori Remington said.

“A step plan to me is a transparent salary plan, especially for elected officials,” Remington said.

When amending the budget, Friedberg said it was important for the city to show its employees a willingness to invest in them.

“I want this document to serve as a communication directly to our staff on behalf of our residents that we support you, we hear you, and we understand there is an increasingly competitive marketplace,” Friedberg said at the May 16 meeting in a statement directed to city employees.

The amendment added an additional $62,950 to the city’s budget to increase wages.

The FY 2022-23 budget originally included a standard 1.5% salary increase to cover the rising cost of living and a second merit-based step increase of 3.5% for eligible employees who have worked for the city for an extended time frame. When coupled with the step increase passed in May, the average full-time employee’s salary will increase 6.5%, Beaman said.

Every year, the U.S. Social Security Administration issues a cost-of-living adjustment in response to rising prices as a result of inflation. In 2022, the U.S. cost of living increased 5.9%.

“You could make the argument that the 4% [increase to employee salaries] is not enough, based on what inflation is doing,” Wesley said during the budget confirmation Sept. 19.

In addition to the salary increases, the city also added two full-time positions in the Bellaire Development Services Department, which officials said accounted for part of the overall increase in spending on salaries in the FY 2022-23 budget. Salaries and benefits account for 60% of the general fund budget.

On Sept. 19, council amended the proposed budget to increase the 1.5% cost-of-living adjustment to 2.5% and added a $15 hourly minimum wage for city employees.

Looking next door

To the east of Bellaire lies West University Place, a city of similar size and population as Bellaire.

Both cities are affluent residential neighborhoods, and both cities are enclaves within the larger city of Houston. Both have fewer than 200 employees, but West University Place did not experience the same staffing shortages as Bellaire, said Dave Beach, West University Place’s city manager.

As of Sept. 15, West University has six full-time vacancies, or 4.6% of its total full-time workforce, compared to Bellaire’s 30 vacancies, according to city records.

Of West University Place’s 124-person staff, the median full-time salary is $66,997 a year compared to Bellaire’s $64,230, according to data supplied by the cities around late August and early September, prior to the passing of FY 2022-23 budgets.

Moving forward, Beaman said the city should conduct a study to determine where it can further raise employee salaries to help keep the city competitive. Funding for the study was also recommended in the 2022-23 budget, but additional details and timelines for when it could take place are to be determined by the council at a later date.

“In the fiscal year 2023 budget is a critical management project to perform a compensation plan and staffing model study to be used as a tool to keep the city of Bellaire competitive in the job market and continue to make this a great place to work,” the city wrote in the budget’s keynote.