City of Victoria making structure changes to two crucial operational organizations
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, December 18, 2025
At Tuesday’s city council meeting, City Manager Jesus Garza presented how the City of Victoria is making changes to some employee structure, an update from the compensation and benefits subcommittee. Beginning Oct. 1, 2025, the City of Victoria implemented some of these changes, and Garza shared the results.
The biggest changes made impacted the 911 dispatchers and public works departments. For public works, the biggest priority for Garza is to fill vacancies and increase retention, and the goal is for the changes to go into effect on Jan. 1.
“With public works, we want to be more competitive,” Garza said. “We have some vacancies in that area and through conversations with the compensation committee, we started to look at things differently. Originally, when we were looking at enhancing pay for the utilities division we simply looked at the struggles to retain and attract individuals.”
Some of the changes to be made include changing the titles to match the responsibilities of each job. The biggest changes are being made to the utility maintenance worker position, as that position lacks the technician title, but requires the skills of one. It also requires those in the position to be on-call, something that only the water treatment plant maintenance technicians are also required to be.
“These are the folks that obviously handle critical infrastructure,” Garza said. “We’ve been talking about instances where they’re working all night to ensure our water quality system is intact. Obviously that position is equally as important as our parks maintenance worker, but the nature of their involvement with our water systems elevates the level of importance, skill set, certifications, licenses, et cetera that are needed.”
To combat this issue, the title of utility maintenance worker is being updated to utility maintenance technician, adding prestige, and matching its corresponding titles. Pay for the position is also being increased from a salary of $34,800 to $38,000.
Loading …The structure for 911 dispatchers is also being updated, as well as increased wages. The goal is to increase retention, as there is currently little room for growth in the position.
“Dispatchers don’t have a step plan like police and fire that creates separation based on your years of service,” Garza said. “We are recommending that we increase starting pay to $23 an hour to match where the county is at, but more importantly create a step structure for dispatchers.”
With the new system, after two years, dispatchers are eligible for promotion to senior dispatcher, which comes with a pay raise to $26 per hour. After four years as a senior dispatcher, they can be promoted to lead dispatcher, where pay is $30 per hour.
The City of Victoria also added a certification program on Oct. 1, which adds an incentive for growth and promotion.
“We’re creating levels that make more sense and make it more consistent with the way that we’re approaching police and fire because our dispatchers truly are first responders,” Garza said.
Some of the changes Garza presented have already gone into effect, and the rest will go into effect Jan. 1.
Lindsey Plotkin is a multimedia reporter for the Victoria Advocate. Contact her at [email protected].
link
