Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Joplin City Council held a work session on Monday, October 12, 2026, to discuss a comprehensive police and fire sales tax spending plan addressing city employee wages, a federal SAFER grant for the fire department, a new stormwater management ordinance, and a floodplain mapping update.
City Manager Nick, Finance Director Leslie Haask, and HR Director Michelle presented a detailed history of the city's wage challenges. Starting in 2018 with Missouri's Proposition B minimum wage increases, the city's competitive pay position eroded significantly. Minimum wage increased 91% from 2018 to 2026, while the city's proposed wages would only increase 67%. A market study shows the city at 91% of regional pay. The spending plan proposes 23% wage increases for police and fire personnel and a 12% increase for general employees, funded by a voter-approved half-cent sales tax renewal.
HR Director Michelle emphasized the severity of turnover, describing an annual loss of 75 to 100 employees, many before their probation ends. She cited specific wage gaps of $6-$7 an hour and $15,000-$20,000 annually for specialized roles compared to the private sector, stating people are "trying to survive" and that benefits alone cannot close the gap.
Staff announced a $799,000 federal SAFER grant to partially fund six new firefighter positions over three years. Council gave consensus to accept the grant and granted flexibility to staff to accelerate police hiring if qualified candidates are available, with capital costs to be resolved later.
Stormwater Engineer Steven Martinez presented a proposed ordinance to centralize stormwater code and establish enforcement authority for maintenance of private stormwater infrastructure. Council provided guidance to proceed.
Public Works staff provided an educational update on flood risk terminology and the Jasper County floodplain remapping project, which uses new 2D modeling for greater accuracy. The update was received as informational.
And good evening, everyone. Welcome uh to this uh Joplin City Council work session on Monday, October 12th. Uh appreciate all of you uh being here this evening. Uh so let's just get right to it, Mr. City Manager. Good to see you this evening. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Uh tonight I want to have a discussion about the implementation of a uh police and fire uh proposition police and fire uh spending plan. There are numerous uh questions last time this was uh presented. I want to make sure we cover those questions, uh make sure your uh concerns get addressed uh because this is all teed up for uh the budget uh ordinance that will be presented to you on October 19. So Leslie is gonna walk through uh some of the history of the timeline, uh how we got here, some of the financial information. And Michelle's gonna share with you uh some key insights from uh the HR department. So let's get through the uh uh presentation and then uh see what questions there might be. Thank you. Ms. Haask, thank you for being here. Evening, Mayor, Council. So um, as Nick said, uh this presentation will walk us through uh how the general employee pay plan was developed and why. It will also work us walk us through how the actual implementation of the new tax works. So really uh everything started way back in uh 2018 when Missouri voters passed proposition B, not to be confused with our proposition B. Uh this actually had to do with minimum wage increases. Um it did pass and it set up a schedule scheduled increases through 2023, uh followed by cost of living adjustments. At the time, though, cities only had to follow the federal minimum wage until 2025 when the governor signed a law that included cities uh in the state minimum wage requirement. So by 2021, the city's first step was only 29 cents above the Missouri minimum wage. By 2022, we were only 13 cents above. So while the state minimum wage didn't really formally apply to us, uh it really did. Um you have to it helps to think about what was going on at this time. Um this was also during COVID. Um a lot of people were not working in the workforce, and um wages were going up, uh so a lot of things were going on. Uh private sector uh was increasing wages, and uh we here at the city, we even though it didn't apply to us, we uh were having trouble uh filling jobs. Uh so like other government employees, employers, uh the passage of Missouri Prop B was really one of the first major factors in the city's recruiting and retention difficulties across the whole organization. In 2018, prior uh to the law, uh minimum wage was 785, and the city's first step in our pay plan, uh which sets the groundwork for the entire pay plan was nine dollars and seventy-two cents, which is really dollar uh eighty-seven above that minimum wage, which was twenty-four percent. But as we were able unable to keep pace at the same proportion, it really impacted our hiring and retention at every level across the entire organization. So we have a chart here that shows uh the impact of minimum wage from 2018 uh to now. So you can see uh started at 785 in 2018. Uh the city's starting wage was nine seventy-two. So we were about 24 percent above that. Uh 29 2019 came around and minimum wage went up 9.6 percent. Uh our beginning step went up zero. So we we eroded to 13 percent above minimum wage. 2020, another nine point nine percent uh increase in state minimum wage. We did increase at that point nine percent, but you can see we're still only above minimum wage by twelve percent.