Augusta Commissioners met on July 26 in committees to discuss a variety of topics, chiefly bonuses and pay raises for city employees; they also turned down a request from the Parks and Recreation Department to hire a “subject matter expert.”
Interim City Administrator Takiyah Douse presented the Administrative Services Committee with an employee retention plan that includes doubling the annual cost of living increase as well as bonuses for all workers.
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According to Douse, the current job vacancy rate is 26% this year as opposed to just 16% in 2019 and she told commissioners that the city needs to approve a “compensation study” that would likely come at a cost of $250,000.
Douse recommended a 3% across the board cost of living pay increase at a cost of $1.9 million, which is double the rate of previous years.
“While the stated trends appear to be improving, various factors come into play when it comes to assessing employee turnover, such as quality of life, empathy of the employer to employee real life situations, flexibility of the work environment and improved work-life balance,” Douse said.
To address these challenges, Douse recommended giving a non-merit based, one-time bonus from between $1,000 to $2,500 to all city employees. The bonus, if approved, will be made effective in October.
District 7 Commissioner Sean Frantom and District 8 Commissioner Brandon Garrett resisted giving an across-the-board bonus when the employee could simply take the bonus and then quit their job anyway. Instead, Frantom suggested the city should attempt to find the root of the problem.
“We ought to know why there is so much turnover in some of these areas,” he said.
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Frantom noted that employees already have been given perks such as added vacation days and told the interim administrator that the practice of allowing employees to clock in by using their cell phones should no longer be allowed.
“They could be anywhere when they clock in and I’m not sure we have those kinds of controls right now,” Frantom said.
In 2021, around $6 million in American Recovery Plan funding was used by former City Administrator Odie Donald to give raises across the board. At the time, Donald claimed the raises were “baked into” the budget but gave no explanation as to how the city would pay to allow employees to keep the raises once the federal funding ran out.
Last year, employees were granted Juneteenth as a federal holiday, a “mental health day” and employees of the Parks and Recreation Department were given the entire weekend of July 4 to the disdain of taxpayers who found the pools, splash pads and tennis courts all closed on the holiday weekend.
Douse’s recommendation will go on to the full commission on Aug. 2.
One of the departments that has been plagued with turnover over the past two years, the Parks and Recreation Department, came before the Public Services Committee.
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Originally, Parks and Recreation Director Maurice McDowell was originally scheduled to give a presentation on the department’s “master plan;” however, that agenda item was deleted at the last moment. Instead, McDowell proposed using SPLOST 8 funds to hire a consultant, or “subject matter expert” to determine how the SPLOST 8 funds should be spent.
“We felt it prudent that due to rising costs and construction costs we would be good stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars to bring in subject matter experts to help us with a lot of forecasting as it relates to those projects, but also to create a maintenance code to follow those projects,” McDowell said.
District 10 Commissioner John Clarke responded to McDowell’s request.
“Why in the world would we pay for a consultant instead of an actual product? Why would we pay a consultant to do what we already pay (McDowell) to do?” Clarke said.
McDowell’s request was not granted.
Augusta Mayor Hardie Davis Jr. was not present for any of the July 26 committee meetings.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
