{"id":373391,"date":"2026-07-15T01:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T01:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/373391\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T01:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T01:27:14","slug":"lubbock-city-council-debates-pay-raises-for-next-budget-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/373391\/","title":{"rendered":"Lubbock City Council debates pay raises for next budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; Labor costs are expected to play a large part in the city of Lubbock\u2019s budget this year, as some council members push for higher pay for city workers, citing a high employee turnover rate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">District 1 Councilwoman Christy Martinez-Garcia said workers are leaving for other jobs based on pay alone. She called for a higher living wage for city staffers across each department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cAs this city continues to grow and we\u2019re not making that investment into our people, it will continue to trickle into the services we provide,\u201d Martinez-Garcia said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Mayor Mark McBrayer said he wants to focus on pay gaps and retention rates, using targeted raises rather than relying on cost-of-living adjustments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cEvery dollar you put in a department that is full means a dollar you can\u2019t put in that other department to get the position without raising the tax on the taxpayer,\u201d McBrayer said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">District 6 Councilman Tim Collins also said the city should factor in employee turnover, noting that the absence of empty positions does not mean pay is high enough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The council has until October to pass a new budget and property tax rate. Budget priority discussions are scheduled to continue at Citizens Tower.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; Labor costs are expected to play a large part in the city of Lubbock\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[319,66,168,132054,132056,132055,170,169,132057,27],"class_list":["post-373391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-kcbd","tag-local","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-city-budget","tag-lubbock-city-worker-turnover","tag-lubbock-employee-pay-raises","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-mayor-mcbrayer","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}