Seguin Today
Darren Dunn
Jan 19, 2023 | 12:00 AM

(Seguin) — The city of Seguin is looking for ways to recruit more talent to the Seguin police and fire departments.

The city is competing with other surrounding communities for police officers, fire fighters and dispatchers. They are looking for not only new recruits, but they are also seeking to hire more seasoned employees, who might be willing to make the move to one of the local departments. 

City Manager Steve Parker says the city hopes that a new step and lateral program will help them better recruit people to the police and fire departments.  He says the proposed program, which was presented during Tuesday’s Seguin City Council meeting, enhances some of the previous steps that have been taken by the city to attract new police officers and fire fighters to the community. He says there’s a lot of competition for these employees, which is why the city needs to consider this new program. 

“For the last several years with public safety, we’ve implemented things like education pay, acting pay, bilingual pay — all those different things that make staff and we’ve been very competitive with COLAs (cost-of-living adjustments) and market increases but as we got into this year and started looking at where the trends were with all of our competitors and seeing the less people that are applying for these jobs with police and fire, we knew that we had to make some corrective action to stay competitive and so the team of police and fire and HR have worked together to I think come up with a plan that really does make us sustainable. In a lot of way, it gives a lot of benefit to the things they are going to recommend tonight. I am 100 percent on board with this recommendation because I think it will make us strong in recruiting new personnel. It will also make us very strong and lateral entries where we can actually recruit people that have experience already that can join our team instead of having to bring in fresh recruits every year and train them up,” said Parker. 

Human Resources Director Kristy Lehnert explained how the city’s current system focuses more on merit pay, which runs counter to what’s offered by many other departments in the area. Many of those communities offer a more robust step system, which makes it harder for the city of Seguin to keep up with the pay increases being dictated by the market in this area.

“When we started looking at COLA during budget, we tried to go as high as we could because of the market but again, the market followed us unfortunately. Everybody else raised their pay rates. Everybody else raised their hiring incentives especially with our top three competitors which are of course, New Braunfels and San Marcos and then the Austin and San Antonio area. Believe it or not, we have a lot of individuals who commute into this city for your police and fire and so they have that opportunity to go elsewhere right now because it’s so competitive and so I am trying to make sure we are educated and making smart decisions when it comes to pay and that we are just not losing qualified good people because we haven’t kept up with the market,” said Lehnert.

Lehnert says that the upgraded step system would fall more in line with what these emergency workers expect. She says they expect to have a clear idea of what they will make year to year. The new program also addresses the city’s lack of a lateral program, which would help to attract more seasoned employees to the city. 

“What are the benefits of moving from our merit based program to a step plan for both fire and police? It provides a market pay, structure and it’s recognized because all of these other communities are utilizing that and this personnel, that’s what they are looking for. Again, a market wide incentive like lateral entry — so what does that mean? Currently, we get experienced personnel but we don’t have a program in place to say I’m  going to pay you more because you have five years of experience on another police force or I’m going to pay you more as a fire fighter because you have 10 years of experience at another fire station. We are trying to make sure that we stay competitive and get those individuals to come here. This is a great place. We want you here,” said Lehnert.

The new step program not only makes it clearer what these firefighters and police officers will be paid, but it also allows them to move up the steps at a greater rate, because many of the steps would be reduced for a specific job. 

“Currently, our pay group has 20 steps in it. Our city on all of our positions currently operates on a pay group and step program. This recommendation is going to push it to market where as some of these higher positions of lieutenant — instead of having 15 steps, he’s now only going to have six. We are conducing that scale so therefore, there’s not that much but again the market tells us that there’s just so much that a lieutenant can make and so we are getting that to market so that actually in the end, it won’t cost the city as much so that’s another reason why we are recommending it,” said Lehnert.

Lehnert told the city council that there are a number of benefits to the program. She says it will attract new and better qualified candidates for police, fire and dispatch positions in the city of Seguin.

“It will provide our organization with candidates who may be best in their profession which will foster competitive and ongoing skills development. So again, this is just trying to get more of that experience here in Seguin and so if we implement a step plan, then we can do the lateral program with it,” said Lehnert.

Lehnert says the city wants to hire the best of the best for these jobs. She says in order to do that, they have to do everything that they can to compete against neighboring communities, who might offer a better overall compensation program. She says the new step plan and lateral program will help the city with this very competitive process.

“It’s a very utilized marketing tool right now that currently in these communities that are very close in this area are using and these officers are unfortunately looking for that. They are looking for that guarantee because they can see their career path growth with that step plan. It’s a guarantee. It’s basically saying I’m going to earn this next year. I’m going to earn this the year after. It’s a road map for them to show what their earnings will be here at our city,” said Lehnert.

The item was on the agenda for presentation only. That means no action was taken, but it was fairly clear that the consensus of the council was for staff to move forward with this plan to formally develop the new step plan and lateral program.