The city of Victoria is working to increase wages for all departments, including police and fire, starting with the proposed pay program.
Historically, the city’s Fire and Police departments, as well as the Public Works Department, have struggled with retention rates, which has prompted the city to take a look at where it stands with compensation in comparison to other cities in the region,
City Manager Jesús A. Garza said. The city has been working on the issue since 2020, but efforts to properly address retention concerns continue due to the pandemic and rising interest and inflation rates, which increase the cost of living.
Even though there have been struggles with the pandemic, inflation and interest rates, the city has put $5 million towards improving wages, health benefits and retirement over the past four years,
Garza said.
‘We were able to invest in our employees over that four-year period because we still had extra money coming in,” Garza said. “We generated more revenue with property taxes and sales tax revenue, and we generated more of that in the last four years, comparatively speaking, to the 10-year period before then.”
However, those increases are beginning to plateau
because of things like rising inflation and interest rates, which have led to people spending less money in the community. Additionally, the city still struggles with retention rates and losing employees to larger cities that are experiencing growth at a much higher rate than Victoria. Over the past 20 years, Victoria has experienced only an 8% growth rate compared to other cities like New Braunfels, which has seen a 147% growth rate, Garza said.
Those cities are able
to pay city employees at the market rate for employee wages, but Victoria is currently behind the market, particularly when it comes to wages for police, fire and various departments, such as public works.
The goal of the new proposed pay program is to increase city employee wages by a total of $3.2 million over a two-year period, Garza said. Recommendations from the proposed pay program for fiscal year 2025 include a 5%
across-the-board wage increase to the Police and Fire departments and a 3% across-the-board wage increase to all other city employees. Also included is raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and a new certification pay structure is under review for possible addition for the Public Works and Environmental Services departments.
Recommendations for the 2026 fiscal year include the adoption of a new step plan and pay ranges for all
employees to reflect 90% of the current market rate for employee wages. Current starting salaries for Victoria police officers is $50,970 a year, but if adopted, the proposed pay program would raise it to $56,466 a year starting in fiscal year 2026. Starting pay for Victoria firefighters is $50,412 but would be increased to $54,381 under the proposed pay program.
The $3.2 million needed to fund the proposed pay program will come from
freezing ten positions within the city, spending less money on one-time expenditures and a proposed change to the Texas Municipal Retirement System plan that the city currently has, Garza said.
The update to the retirement system will not take away from any deposits the city has already made into employees’ accounts, Garza said.
