Montgomery looking to hire city employees with fiscal 2023 budget

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - The Montgomery City Council has passed its budget for fiscal year 2023. Amid a labor shortage, the city will be using part of the funds to maintain staff.

“Every one of our department heads came before the council looking for money, and the number one problem was they couldn’t get employees,” said Charles Jinright, council president and District 9 council member.

A $290 million budget was approved by the council. Financial reports are available online.

As inflation continues, some of those dollars will go toward pay increases for city employees.

“When you have shortness of employees, you got a problem with picking up trash. You got a problem with not enough police officers, not enough paramedics,” Jinright said.

“We’re in the business of serving the people. We got to have the people to serve the people,” he said.

The council also approved funding for 89 new positions, ranging from parks and recreation employees to sanitation workers.

“We have so many colleges here in the city of Montgomery and guess what we want them to do? We want them to stay,” said District 6 Councilman Oronde Mitchell. “So in order for them to stay we must create jobs.”

Another focus of the budget will be to make upgrades to public parks.

“Our parks and rec department, we attract almost a million people a year to Montgomery,” Jinright said. “So we’ve got to upgrade our product that we have.”

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