City employees, already stretched thin, face stagnant wages for second year in a row.
PETERSBURG—It's no secret that the city of Petersburg is understaffed. But even as city employees are stretched thin, with many doing the work of multiple employees to fill in the gaps left by vacant spots, this year's preliminary budget revealed that they will not be getting a raise for the second year in a row.
A city personnel summary presented at Tuesday's FY24-25 community budget meeting revealed that a whopping 104 out of 501 city employee positions — over a fifth of all positions — are vacant. This includes an average vacancy rate of almost 25% in at least 23 out of the city's 32 departments. In other words, nearly three quarters of Petersburg's departments are missing a quarter of the staff that they should be operating with. Only 9 departments were reported as being fully staffed.
Petersburg's most direly understaffed departments include Economic Development and the Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act (VJCCCA) Department (50 percent vacancies) and Animal Control, Social Services and Emergency Communications (approximately 40 percent vacancies.)
With skyrocketing inflation over the last couple of years and employees at city departments already stretched thin, citizens who attended Tuesday's budget meeting worried that stagnant wages for those who are sticking around might exacerbate existing city vacancies. They proposed that—instead of going to Petersburg's already bloated fund balance— the money that departments are saving from staffing shortages should go toward a raise for the employees who are sticking around to pick up the slack.
"This is the second year in a row where employees are getting no raise whatsoever, and that's a serious issue," said one attendee during the meeting's open comment period. "With inflation, they're already making less than they were a year ago. If I was a city employee and I was looking at this, this would definitely increase the rate of vacancies."
"What this comes down to is the city's priorities," said another attendee, community activist and co-founder of Clean Sweep Petersburg Barb Rudolph. "And right now it looks like city employees are not a priority at all."
Meanwhile, some of the city's vacancy numbers may also be underreported. Code Enforcement, for example, had no vacancies listed in the document that was handed out to meeting attendees. However, this is not the case. In fact, during Petersburg's April 16th City Council Meeting, head of Code Enforcement Jim Reid announced staff shortages within the department and asked people to apply for vacant positions.
"If anybody in the community knows anybody that's interested in a job in property maintenance as a property maintenance inspector, it's on the city website under jobs," Reid said during the meeting. "Please apply."
The city's next budget meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 25 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. It will be held virtually at the following link.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Already understaffed, city denies employees a raise for second year.
