In an interview on Lubbock’s First News on KFYO, former councilman Victor Hernandez, who is running for the council again, said the lack of a pay raise for city employees is affecting morale, and therefore the council should take a look at salaries. When asked whether a tax increase would be needed to pay for a salary increase, Hernandez talked about another alternative.
“There’s a lot of different ways to go about doing that,” Hernandez said. “There were three council members, currently sitting on the city council, that tried to do a budget transfer from LP&L in order to get the employees a pay raise. That failed, but that’s one example of how you can do balance transfers without actually having a tax increase.”
Later, Hernandez said such a transfer would be a bad idea. So, would a tax increase be needed?
“I don’t really believe we’re needing a tax increase,” Hernandez said. “We just need to prioritize our expenses.”
KFYO Local News 
April 27, 2010 at 7:02 pm
There is absolutely no reason for a city to not be competitive in the market, especially with other local entities. All salary information is public record, so if a City wants to know if their salaries are competitive, they just need to ask – or check out a database site like http://www.dfwsalaries.com or http://lang.dailynews.com/socal/citypayroll/
The issue isn’t necessarily that there haven’t been raises, it is, are our salaries competitive in the market? Are we getting the right people?