The City of Tyler wants its employees to be well-compensated and equipped with resources they need to serve the community effectively. That’s from Tyler City Manager, Ed Broussard, who explains just how Tyler is making this reality with its ‘future ready’ budget for 2014. It aims to correct salary discrepancies, remain competitive in the market and provide equipment for the police and fire departments, such as replacement body cameras.
Broussard says the budget addresses disparities revealed in a recent salary survey and strives to retain the best personnel amid tough competition from state agencies and school districts.
MIKE LANDESS: For UT Tyler Radio. I’m Mike Landess. The City of Tyler has put together its proposed fiscal 2014 budget, and it comes in at nearly 6% more than last year — $241.1 million. The theme for the new budget is “future ready,” and public safety is a top priority. To explain that and fill in the details is Tyler City Manager, Ed Broussard. Welcome.
ED BROUSSARD: I’m glad to be here this morning.
LANDESS: It’s good to have you here. So, what does “future ready” mean?
BROUSSARD: As we were putting together the budget-last year we had, with the W.T. Brookshire Conference Center, a major achievement of really moving forward a program and service that the community had been wanting in the way of new conference center and revitalization of that part of our community. And the next year, you’ll see us probably working quite a bit on the downtown renovations. But then you’re kind of stuck in this middle period of just how do we make sure we’re taking care of our staff that take care of our public? At the end of the day, the jobs that are being done are being done by the men and women of the City of Tyler who are there taking care of your police, your fire, your water, your wastewater, streets, etc. And so they are the backbone of our organization. And so this year, really our focus was how do we make sure that we have, that we are in this job market, being able to compensate them correctly, that we’re being able to recruit the best and retain the people that we have. And so that’s where this budget’s real focus is, on those essentially 900-plus employees of the City of Tyler, in that how can we make sure that they have the resources they need in order to take care of me and you while we’re here in our community just living our lives.
LANDESS: More than $61 million going to the police department. How’s that going to be used?
BROUSSARD: So, the police department, the funding toward police is, one is working on their salary piece. You know it has become over the past few years a very competitive area, as in policing and so for that market. And so for the police, we did a salary survey this past year, and we found that our police department was, on average, about 7% off of the market. So, as we looked at our market cities that we compare ourselves to: the Wacos, the Abilenes, the Beaumonts, some of the cities in the DFW Metroplex, we found that when you look to the average of it we were about 6 to 7% off for police salaries. A big portion of that is increasing their pay to make sure that it is competitive, so that we’re able to keep the guys and the men and women that we have and then also to be able to recruit the best. That’s always one of the things that we here in Tyler have always been very proud of is when we are out there recruiting, especially for police and fire, that they know that this is the organization that is the premier organization in East Texas, the one that we want them to continue to kind of look for and pay. You know especially that starting pay is always one of those considerations. We’re especially more not only in competition with those cities, but we’re in competition with the state. The Department of Public Safety continues to add to its force as well as increases its pay, so it can get really good people to be able to apply for those jobs. And even our school districts. You know, we see this with our school districts of where they are now having to have armed officers at each of their schools, and in doing so…
LANDESS: By law every school in the state has to have an armed officer.
BROUSSARD: Exactly, Sept. 1.
LANDESS: Yeah.
BROUSSARD: Yeah, now you have this kind of mandate that has come down for them to do that, and especially some of our local school districts. Tyler ISD is a great one of where they are paying competitive pay. They’re not looking to say, how can we get a guy that just can wear a badge and a gun? You know it’s not the Barney Fife-type situation out there for our school districts. They’re making sure they’re getting strong, competent people to take on those jobs. But that now becomes, again, now another place that we’re competing against for, as far as recruits. And so that’s something where, for especially police and for fire as well, we found in the same salary survey, we found that fire was about 3% off. Is what can we do to make sure that we are then doing? Their compensation is kind of at the top for East Texas and making sure that we’re able to be competitive for, to get the right people in for our police and fire departments.
LANDESS: You put a compensation component in this in terms of the public service folks, of the $61.5 million for police departments and $25.1 for the fire department also includes equipment. Can you tell us about that for police and for fire?
BROUSSARD: So, for police one of the things that we started this past year that we continue with this year that is rolled into that number, is on replacement of the body cams on the videos systems that they have with their cars, on just their tasers, so that they have better-equipped tasers to utilize. It is, you know, with policing nowadays especially, we wanted to be as transparent as possible. So, what can we do to make sure we decrease any chances of harming the officer? As well as, whatever we can do to, you know, to prevent something awful from happening to the person that they’re having to deal with. You know, that’s the last piece we want to ever get to, and so, if an officer can be able to take down a suspect with a taser or some other non-lethal device, they want to try to get to that measure before they ever have to get to something that’s more life-threatening. And so that’s something that our police department has focused on and continues with this budget. There’s also with the fire department. There are things that we’ve been having to replace for the fire department, the fire engines especially. We’ve gotten on a bit more aggressive schedule on replacement of the fire engines.
LANDESS: And those things aren’t cheap.
BROUSSARD: They are not cheap at all. They typically take a cost about a million dollars for a fire engine. And so, you kind of think, and now the build time of those has gone from typical about nine months to now 18 months. So, what you’re ordering today is you’re not going to see for another year and a half. We’re very excited this, probably next month or in September or into October, our new tower engine will be coming. In fact, you’ll be coming in over here near the UT Tyler campus, over at station 10. And this was a huge engine that we’ll having, but it took 18 months for the full construction. It costs about a million and a half for the full, as far as build out of that. So you’ve got, you know, those type of situations of where you’re replacing vehicle, or as far as, you know, the engines and then new ones.
LANDESS: What’s the element of this budget you’re most proud of?
BROUSSARD: You know, the piece that I’m most proud of is our concentration on our employees. You know, one of the things that I tell our new employees about all the time that when we do our new employee orientation is that the City of Tyler and this community is different than a lot of places that I’ve worked. You know, I’ve worked in about seven different cities throughout the state, and Tyler’s been the one that I’ve been in the longest. And the thing I think that can keeps me here but also keeps so many of our employees who are really have quite extensive stays here, is that this community is behind them and roots for them. A lot of places I’ve worked in, a lot of places I’ve seen in the state, it’s very much, you know, “you work for me, you will do…” You know it’s the employee can do nothing right.
LANDESS: That’s almost adversarial.
BROUSSARD: It is, you know, and here it is, it’s almost, you know you have 110,000 cheerleaders for your police, your fire, your solid waste workers, wanting to see them succeed.
LANDESS: Our guest has been Tyler City Manager Ed Broussard. To hear this conversation again or to share it, go to KVUT. org. There you’ll also find a link that will give more details about the proposed Tyler city budget. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
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