The $688.7 million budget for fiscal year 2022-2023 presented by City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba adds nearly 70 city employees.
Former City Manager David Parrish, who resigned July 1, 2021, received nothing but praise from the Greensboro City Council on his management of the city. Since Parrish resigned, the city has grown by about 1 percent. Yet Parrish was able to manage the city with 70 fewer employees than Jaiyeoba maintains he needs to manage essentially the same city.
The 69.25 new employees are projected to cost the city $4.7 million.
A few of the requested additional positions have been questioned by Mayor Nancy Vaughan and city councilmembers, in particular Vaughn questioned the need to add eight sworn police officers to the budget when the number of vacancies in the Greensboro Police Department (GPD) is high and increasing.
The most recent figures from the Greensboro Police Department list over 100 vacancies in the currently authorized force of 679 sworn police officers. It has also been reported that the current Police Academy class has less than 20 cadets. For the GPD to maintain its current level of staffing, each Police Academy class needs to graduate at least 30 officers, because the GPD loses an average 60 officers a year. Most of those officers retire, but some resign to accept positions with law enforcement agencies with higher pay and more desirable benefits.
District 3 Councilmember and mayoral candidate Justin Outling has noted that while adding eight positions will not increase the number of police officers in the GPD, it will increase the personnel budget available to pay overtime.
The General Fund portion of the budget also includes a number of new positions including a new fire company staffed with 15 employees.
Development Services will add four new employees.
The proposed budget includes an additional assistant city manager and a new General Services department listed as adding only one new employee, the General Services Department director.
The Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise office adds one new employee and Parks and Recreation will add 5.5 new employees.
There is also one “International Support Coordinator” included in the proposed budget.
They should spend more on rewarding those in public positions that actually work hard can care about the service they provide versus throwing more bodies into the mix. They need a real performance culture that pushes out the bottom performing 10% and financially rewards the top 10% as well as realistic competitive comp for proven good performers. Instead they strip away any real performance incentives with their ‘Step Program’ that just pushes you along regardless of performance.
With a real performance based culture as you find in private industry, I bet they could reduce public head count by 20% or more.
Do you know, Chris, I think we are actually in agreement.
Cheers!
Hey Chris, we agree. The step program is another step towards killing morale, especially among the police. Sit on one call all day-you generally get the same raise as a hard charger. John, there are 13-14 still in current academy. The last class started with 40 and now have 27 (in field training). 27 plus 13 (if all graduate and stay) equals 40. which means at the end of the year you can add a minimum of 20 more vacancies. Justin, no one wants to work the overtime. They want to work their days and go home.
This council is composed of idiots. Across the country private and public organizations are doing more with less. All of them need to tell this city manager, who has been here since February to stand down. Grow a nut sack city council and lead. He and the city attorney are your direct employees. That means you can say no.
Lol….ridiculous….
Problem: 100 officers short, and growing. Solution: stop political meddling: raise pay to best in state, higher than anyone else.
What’s so hard about that? We are flush with taxpayer money. I don’t know why any honest citizen would not want a good police dept.
We generally agree, Miller,but do you really believe that throwing more public money at a problem helps to solve it? That ‘s always what liberals say, isn’t it?
You miss the point. We are short 100+ officers. They need to be replaced.
We don’t need assistant assistant public relations managers.
We agree on that!