City makes moves to keep skilled staff and hire more.
City leadership considers city employees to be its greatest asset. Other local municipalities have increased employee compensation in a variety of ways. In order to be competitive, the approved 2025-26 budget has several items written into it to attract employees and keep them.
“It’s all about being able to hire the best quality applicants, and then retain them,” City Manager Bill McDaniel said. “We operate a lot on legacy knowledge and skills. We invest in our personnel when we are hiring them, and we continue to invest in them throughout their careers. So, we want to maximize that investment by retaining the people we brought onto the team. You want to make a good investment. You want to hire people who are going to do the job, and do it well, and also that you will be able to retain. We directly compete with Tampa, Hillsborough County, Lakeland, and even other surrounding jurisdictions who need people to do these jobs. The qualifications to be a law enforcement officer for the City of Plant City are no different than they are in any other city in the state of Florida. To work in our Engineering Department, you have to have the right credentials, and those are credentials that you can take anywhere. Fire Rescue is the same. It doesn’t matter which part of our operation you’re talking about; we have a need for highly-skilled, qualified individuals. We are in a competitive market, and we have to address that.”
For non-step employees, the minimum pay rate will go up from $17.20 per hour to $20 per hour. For general employees, the city has revised the pay grade structure, and compensation will go up by the greater of six percent or the amount of a new pay grade. Eligible employees will receive their next increase on their hiring anniversary date. Also, the city is contributing an additional $150,000 to cover a portion of a nine-and-a-half percent health insurance premium increase.
For the Plant City Police Department (PCPD), the pay of officers on the step plan will increase from a starting amount of $59,585 to $70,346 annually. One of the reasons it is smart to increase pay for PCPD officers is that it saves money. It costs tens of thousands of dollars for the city to complete the hire of a police officer. “There’s a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than people realize,” McDaniel commented. The expense comes from paying recruiters, processing to determine an applicant’s qualifications, background investigations, psychological testing, physicals, equipping them with uniforms, firearms, leather gear, and other things.
In March, according to a local television news station, citing the local union, Plant City Fire Rescue (PCFR) had a high turnover rate because the size of the staff was not growing enough to meet the increasing number of calls coming in as a result of the rapid growth of Plant City. One claim was that a PCFR firefighter worked 400 hours more than those in other Hillsborough County and Pasco County departments. The new Plant City budget is structured to implement a three-week Kelly Day. A Kelly Day is an extra paid day off during a shift cycle. This benefit to the firefighters will reduce an individual’s annual hours worked from 2,912 to 2,496. The Kelly Day, “….is very common in a fire department,” McDaniel said. “It’s a very significant investment. It cost the city a little more than $2 million, and we had to add 20 people to implement that.”
“Overall, we are very excited about where the department is going,” Devin Johnson, a Fire Medic on Rescue 2, said. “I think the three-week Kelly Day is a huge step in the right direction. Everybody is very excited for it. We have lost a dozen people in the last year to other departments that have a Kelly Day or a D-Shift. It’s definitely going to help the morale and also the retention, which is a big one we have been lacking. So, that should definitely help keep people around.”
The plan is to increase fire staff’s pay by four percent, or the change from the new pay grade, whichever is more. In addition, Battalion Chiefs will operate under a new pay-grade structure. The reduction in hours from the Kelly Days may not lower a firefighter’s annual pay because of the pay increase. This plan in the budget could be changed for firefighters, drivers, and captains because their pay is negotiated in collective bargaining. So, the proposed pay rates for these staff are subject to ratification and approval through a collective bargaining agreement.
The city-wide total number of staff is planned to increase from 540 to 566 by adding these new firefighters and six additional employees in other departments.
