A $15 per hour minimum wage could be in the cards for city employees if a few city council members get their way.
However, it would “significantly” change the makeup of the city’s proposed $27.6 million budget for Fiscal Year 2025, Chief Financial Officer Jim Brigham said Thursday during the first of two scheduled budget hearings at City Hall.
The draft budget includes an already approved 6% increase to hourly police officer and firefighter pay, as well as a proposed 3% pay increase for all other city employees.
Responding to a question from Ward 4 Councilman Pierre Beard, Chief Operations Officer Jammie Garrett said the lowest-paid full-time city employees still make about $12.87 per hour.
“Is there any way possible you can get it up to $15?” he asked, sparking a discussion that took up a significant portion of the roughly 80-minute meeting.
“I think that ought to be a goal as we move forward,” Brigham said, noting he didn’t think it could happen next fiscal year without increasing the proposed tax rate on residents’ real and personal property.
“I really wish we could come up with something to get these employees to at least $15,” Beard said. “I don’t know if we need to cancel some of this other stuff that we’re doing. But we’ve been preaching and singing to our employees of how much we appreciate them. You can go other places and do less work than some of our employees do (and make more). We need to get in the new age and pay them what they’re worth.”
Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones agreed with Beard, then zeroed in on certain spending in the draft budget, specifically $140,000 to create a handful of new positions.
Garrett said those included an assistant for her office, a public information officer and a part-time building inspector, among others.
Jones said it “doesn’t sit right with me” to create those positions before the city shores up the pay scale for existing employees.
“We should look at increasing them first, and then with what we have left, we can look at hiring other people,” he said. “We need to take care of the employees we have right now first.”
Ward 1 Councilwoman Ethel Stewart asked if Garrett or Brigham had calculated the costs per year for the city’s high employee turnover – particularly the cycle of hiring and training personnel who then leave.
Garrett acknowledged that cycle is costly, but she didn’t know the exact figure. She also noted the turnover problem “is everywhere.”
Stewart, though, focused her concerns on Columbus.
“I get lots of calls (from employees) saying, ‘I have to eat at Dollar Tree. I can’t afford to go to Kroger. I can’t afford to go to Walmart,” she said. “… It’s expensive for employees to work for less than $15 an hour.”
Mayor Keith Gaskin noted the city has raised employee salaries the past two years, in addition to the planned raises for next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. He said adequate facilities and equipment – other priorities in the city’s budgeting process – are important indicators for work environment and morale.
“If we try to do those types of raises across the board, it’s going to significantly affect the other areas we’re discussing,” Gaskin said.
Brigham said he would provide the council hard estimates on what it would cost for a $15 an hour minimum wage for city employees, but he warned salary compression would also be a factor.
“Because if you have a team leader who is at $15 right now, then they need to go up to recognize that they are in a leadership position,” he said. “So it’s a wave that goes all the way up.”
Beard said “in a perfect world” he would like to see everyone below $15 an hour brought to that level and pay for everyone else raised 3%.
“That’s a perfect world,” Brigham said. “You’re right.”
Budget at a glance
The draft budget presented Thursday included a projected surplus of $280,655, as well as sharp increases in both revenue and expenditures.
Brigham projects operating revenue of $27,918,000, up about $1.48 million from what was budgeted for this fiscal year. Though he is proposing a property tax rate of 53 mills, down 1.11 mills from FY 2024, increased property values in the city means that lower rate will still generate an additional $600,000. He also projects sales tax collections will be $500,000 higher than what was budgeted for this year.
The draft projects $27,637,345 in expenses next year, up about $1.6 million from what was budgeted this year. The raises, new positions and an increase in Public Employee Retirement System payments make up roughly $900,000 of that increase, with the rest coming from vehicle fleet upgrades, information technology improvements, supplies and “other.”
Still, Brigham said, FY 2024 revenue should exceed what was budgeted, while expenses should fall short of expectations. With less than two months left in the fiscal year, he reported the city’s revenue is running about $1.3 million ahead of expenses.
The next budget hearing is 6 p.m. Thursday at City Hall. The council must adopt the city budget by Sept. 15.
Tennessee Williams Home
Another discussion Thursday spawned from whether the council would budget $54,000 in matching funds for a grant to restore the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center downtown.
The Columbus Cultural Heritage Foundation has received about $265,000 in grants – including from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Mississippi Hills Heritage Area – to restore the historic home that was the birthplace of the famous playwright.
Renovations are nearly complete, CCHF Executive Director Nancy Carpenter told the council Thursday, and she expects the welcome center to reopen this fall.
The match, which Carpenter said is due in the “next few months,” is required for the original $159,000 MDAH award, the largest of four total grants received for the project. At the time CCHF applied, Mayor Keith Gaskin signed an agreement to work with the city council or find private donors to provide the needed $54,000.
“Typically before you write the grant, people talk to us beforehand and ask if we would support it … instead of writing the grant and expecting us to support it,” Jones told Carpenter during the budget meeting.
Gaskin took responsibility for signing the document, blaming time constraints in the grant application for not first bringing it to the council.
Council members present did not indicate whether they would include the match in next year’s budget, nor did they approve any specific requests outside appropriations during their discussions.
“If the council chooses not to match the grant, I will have to help the CCHF find private support to meet the obligation,” Gaskin wrote Friday in a text to The Dispatch.
The project also includes a bronze sculpture of Tennessee Williams funded by a $75,000 private donation.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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