WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Warner Robins city employees can soon look forward to a little extra cash flow. Monday, the Mayor and council will vote on their new employee pay scale.
Mayor LaRhonda Patrick's administration has worked to emphasize helping city employees since 2022. Talks of raising Warner Robins employee's pay started in March of 2022.
"Our essential workers, they hold the city together, and they need to be rewarded appropriately. We need to make these jobs that we have available attractive for new employees," Councilmen Derek Mack said in a 2022 interview about employee pay.
By May 2022, the city planned to allocate $2.5 million to help employees. This included a 10% raise for most city employees and a $4,000 bonus for police, firefighters and new recruits. The money came out of their 2023 budget.
"We have so many jobs open right now, because of the actual advertised salary and so we are going to have to do something drastic in order to meet that need. So, that we can hire policemen, firemen, and public works people. I mean there are just jobs everywhere," Councilmen Keith Lauritsen said in a 2022 interview.
The city still has this same problem today. They are looking to fill 134 positions between their police, fire, public works, utilities, and stormwater departments.
"We've not done a big push again for getting candidates for those positions because every result I received indicated that pay was an issue," Mayor LaRhonda Patrick said in an interview two weeks ago.
She said then, the city found a solution.
"We were able to find well over $4 million in the budget that will help us to find the money to give these raises," she said, referring to their 2024 budget.
Mayor Patrick told us there will not be a standard increase, it will vary by position and rank.
However, the mayor has told us her goal is to make livable and competitive wages.
"It allows people a better quality of life, we are finding that with the inflation people are having a very hard time trying to afford a mortgage and especially afford rent, so this is better for our entire city overall," she said.
Council will meet at a new location and time for the big announcement. They will meet Monday at 1:00 p.m. at Southside Baptist Church.
All non-essential City of Warner Robins offices will close from noon to 3:00 p.m. on Monday for employees to attend the meeting.