From today’s Radiogram:
The City Manager also shared that the city is finding it challenging to get enough applicants to work the city pools. The City of Lampasas wants to open both pools, but have no returning lifeguards. Anyone that has an interest in lifeguarding, or working around pools should put an application in at City Hall.
You’d think a guy who makes $140,000 per year (plus another $40,000 or so in benefits) to run the city would be smart enough to RAISE THE OFFERED WAGE for a job they can’t fill.
You’d be wrong. He only raises wages for high-paying City Nerf jobs that have multiple applicants – like when he raised the Economic Director salary from $33,000 to around $66,000 for no reason whatsoever.
Or when the Chamber of Commerce position was cranked from $45,000 up to $65,000 despite having multiple applicants!
These nitwits have my brains and acumen available to them for free and refuse to listen. I’ve gone over this several times now. HERE and HERE. But apparently skulls are way too thick and IQs are far too low on City council and at City Hall.
City council has been totally out to lunch on this issue. Mist Talbert threw down $12,000 without blinking an eye for some plans…PLANS…for a bike trail at some point in the future – but she refuses to open the purse to lure in kids to work two pools WE ALREADY HAVE SITTING THERE. Absolute and complete mental retardation, if you ask me.
Council is also discussing blowing $200,000 or $300,000 to make the Hostess House look pretty, but again – can’t pay lifeguards more than the pittance they are offering.
Here’s the problem: Finley has never worked in the real world. He doesn’t understand how it all works. Ditto for much of City council (Williamson was a lifelong government bureaucrat, Toups and Kuehne work for government schools).
So let me clue you in:
There are several forces at work right now in the labor market. FIRST is our moron president handing out money to people for doing nothing AND throwing in federal unemployment payments to boot. Not to mention the plethora of other welfare programs that make it worth more to sit on ass than work. This KILLS the incentive to work. You are competing against THAT, first of all.
Secondly, you are competing against OTHER cushy, overpaid government jobs. I remember seeing one recently for our own City that paid something like $17/hr to sit in a booth and collect utility payments from citizens. PLUS benefits!
Yet you stupidly offer only $7.25 for a lifeguard position that, arguably, is a lot tougher than most City Nerf jobs. Hell, Mandy Walsh makes over $100,000 in salary in benefits – just for reposting Facebook posts and getting tricked into trying to hand free money to an obvious scam artist like Mike Cour!
The solution is very simple. PAY A HIGHER WAGE. We have an awesome pool sitting there PAID FOR and READY TO USE, but you morons absolutely refuse to throw a few thousand more dollars at the wages….at the same time you are blowing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS on stupid shit like the Business Park, the Hostess House and all the rest.
What a sad bunch of clowns. Can’t wait until City council is cleaned out in a few weeks. We might actually get some people in there who have worked in the private sector and understand all this.