We are all familiar with the old adage of when one at first does not succeed, one must keep trying. That certainly applies to our continuing efforts to keep the promise to “Just Fix the Roads.”
While preparing for the June 20 Board of Supervisors meeting, we noticed that in the proposed upcoming budget, there were 1,009 vacant Pima County employment positions depicted as though they were all filled. According to County Administrator Jan Lesher’s June 7 memorandum, the vacant positions totaled some $64 Million, accounted for already and included in the upcoming fiscal year budget. Yet there are no employees in these jobs, therefore no one is being paid and no salary costs are being spent.
It was unclear in the County Administrator’s memo what categories and responsibilities the unfilled positions represented, yet 33% of them have been vacant for six months or more. One of my colleagues offered that many of these jobs are within the County Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department. We await confirmation of that by Ms. Lesher. However, in my experience of owning and managing my own business for many years, it is not difficult to determine that jobs that go unfilled for that length of time can hardly be classified as essential. Further, if those same jobs remain vacant for that length of time, chances diminish greatly that they will be filled in the near term.
This should lead to an examination of those unfilled positions as to why they are open. Perhaps a restructuring of those positions to blend in with other duties, responsibilities and salaries should be analyzed. To give all the benefit of the doubt, we took a smaller percentage of those vacancies and their related costs, which resulted in an amount of $13 Million. During the Board meeting, I made a motion that the amount be swept from the County Budget’s jobs category for just one fiscal year and be reallocated to the County’s neighborhood road repair program. This redirection of monies was designed to make up for projected shortfalls affecting neighborhood roads. Our motion failed 2 – 3, with Supervisor Bronson joining our efforts.
If you recall, at previous Board meetings, we tried to delay for simply one fiscal year, a proposed $14 Million pay raise for Pima County employees, and to reallocate those funds instead to repairing neighborhood roads. At the time, and even to this day, the proposed pay raises have not even been identified as to which employees are going to receive raises and in what amount. Yet the entire raise package was already included in the budget. My motion on that item failed as well.
Bear in mind, this comes after County employees have received 4 raises in 5 years amounting in total salary adjustments of roughly 10 – 15%. Don’t get me wrong, as a former private sector employer, I recognize the need for appropriate employment wages and benefits to attract, recruit, hire and retain quality employees. Pima County has many top-notch employees. However, reflect for a moment, have you received such pay raises during the last 5 years?
It should be noted that during the last Supervisors meeting, a colleague of mine stated that he was “sick of hearing about the roads” and went on to say that enough monies were going toward repairing the roads already.
I will never lose sight of our mission to “Just Fix the Roads” and remain committed to keeping our road repair promise made in 2019, even if it means we have to try, try, try again.
Pima County Supervisor Steve Christy, District 4
33 N. Stone Avenue, Floor 11
Tucson, AZ 85701
520-724-8094
district4@pima.gov
