The Greenwood City Council Monday evening fast-tracked raises for several part-time city positions in an attempt to get the jobs filled.
Like many organizations, Greenwood has had difficulty finding people to fill several part-time, seasonal and stand-by positions in different city departments, including its finance, fire, human resources and police departments.Due to the economic climate, the current maximum pay rates for these positions — which were approved during last year’s budget process — have made it difficult to fill the positions, causing staffing shortages, city officials said.
“Particularly, parks maintenance is short 20 people for doing mowing. (The) street department is having trouble getting laborers in there for part-time work. Several departments have expressed they’re having trouble getting people,” Greg Wright, city controller, told the city council Monday night.
Officials identified 33 positions in 14 departments that should have the maximum pay rates raised to attract applicants. Most of the hourly increases were between $3 and $6. No increase was larger than $7 an hour, based on an analysis of both the new and old rates.
The city controller’s office, in collaboration with the mayor’s office, worked with department heads to see what positions need to be filled and to try to come up with solutions, Wright said.
“I think it’s really a nationwide problem, but our attempt to address that is to raise the pay rates for some of these part-time positions in the hopes that we can attract some people in and fill some of those,” Wright said.
While the city is raising pay rates, each department’s budgeted amount for the positions will remain the same. Since it’s halfway through the year and the positions remain unfilled, the departments should have money left over from the budgeted amount not being used to pay people, Wright said.
“Our hope is to at least get some people coming in through the higher rates and get people into these positions that are desperately needed,” he said.
After Wright’s presentation, city council member Linda Gibson asked if there was a need for the council to suspend the rules to get the pay increases passed immediately. Other businesses are also falling behind due to not having enough staff, she said.
“It seems like this is a critical situation,” Gibson said.
The council rules require an ordinance or resolution up for consideration to be heard three times by the council before final approval. Wright expressed his support for the rule suspension, and later the council unanimously voted to suspend the rules and approve the pay increases.
Also on Monday, the council gave the final OK to annex more than 294 acres of agricultural land in Clark Township, just outside Greenwood city limits.
Pulte Homes of Indiana requested to annex 249.9-acres located south of County Line Road and east of Five Points Road. The land will be brought in under agricultural zoning.
Once the land is officially incorporated into city limits, it would become part of City Council District 3, causing a re-alignment of the district. Homes on the land would continue to be served by Clark-Pleasant Community Schools and the Johnson County Public Library, according to city documents.
Part of the annexation area is currently served by Needham Community Volunteer Fire Department, with Greenwood Fire Department serving a parcel west of Five Points Road. Once officially incorporated, Greenwood would serve the whole area, city documents say.
Rex Ramage of Pulte Homes told the Greenwood Advisory Plan Commission in May that this annexation is the second phase of a previous annexation the commission had before them in November.
At that time, the developer came to the city to request an annexation of more than 300 acres of land east of Interstate 65. However, as the annexation made its way through the city council, the number of acres was lowered to slightly more than 104 after one of the landowners withdrew from the process. Rather than making parts of the annexation involuntary, the developer decided to shrink the request. The annexation was approved by the city council in November.
Ramage also told the commission there were no projects up for review. Right now, the land is only being annexed, he told the commission in May.
