Bart Boles, general manager of the Henderson Water Utility in Henderson Kentucky, is standing in a cinderblock pump station on the Ohio River, flanked by large metal apparatus.
“You’ll hear a noise once it kicks on,” he said. As promised, the short metallic rev of a high service pump cuts through the normal drone of machinery working.
“It's the last step before the water goes to the customer,” he said. "They're pumping it to the customer, they pump it out of this 1.4 million gallon clear well that we're standing on top of, to the customer.”
The Henderson Water Utility serves about 50,000 customers, he said. The City of Henderson and cities Seabury and Beach Grove, Kentucky and the nearby Tyson chicken plant are corporate customers.
When fully staffed they have 87 employees. But this is not currently the case. Boles said one large reason is employee retirement.
“But you know, there's also some competitive industries in town that we're losing to.”
One example is the new Pratt Paper Mill. The mill does create challenges for city departments, but it’s also a boon to the local economy.
“So we've seen that growth, but we've also seen a lot of growth with our existing industries,” said Missy Vanderpool, executive director of the Henderson Economic Development Corporation. “Henderson has a large manufacturing base, and we've seen a lot of growth with our existing industries, some expansion projects.”
One example is the Columbia Sportswear company.
She said growth can be attributed in part to Henderson's location and multi-modal transportation, with the river, railway and the I-69 expansion.
As the city is experiencing growth, its departments might lose some employees because these private industries can offer better compensation.
Open positions can also affect current employees. During the winter, water utility field crews suffered most due to the regular uptick in water main breaks.
“So our folks there worked hard as it is (that) time of year,” Boles said. “And when you have less people they're on call much more. And so it's tough on our staff right now because of that.”
Similar industries also pull utility workers away, like septic maintenance and lawn irrigation.
Of course this isn’t just a challenge in Henderson. The City of Evansville, Indiana currently has 45 positions open. Tamara Payne is executive director of the City of Evansville Human Resources.
She said the largest employment deficit is with the city transportation system, METS.
“We are probably down 20-plus bus drivers for city transportation,” Payne said. “So we have an urgent need to bring people in who hold those CDL qualifications and are interested in working for the City of Evansville.”
One solution could be establishing an in-house CDL training school right in town, because current training could be as far away as Indianapolis.
Vanderburgh County had to adapt to hold onto part time employees at Burdette Park.
Director Zach Wathen sought and was approved for a $1.50 pay bump for all employees in March from the County Council.
“The national averages — we're not even close right now,” he said at the meeting, prior to the vote. “So that gets us a little closer to that national average and some of the surrounding (area) like DNR … hotels, City of Henderson that are similar positions.”
He’s referencing competition between cities — Henderson and Evansville draw from the same workforce.
As a region grows, the water and sewer utility systems will also grow to accommodate and reach new businesses. By all accounts, leadership at Pratt has made many efforts to be a good corporate citizen for the area.
Boles disagrees that these employment challenges are “growing pains.”
“But it does make it tougher on us, you know, because there's more capital that needs to be spent, there's more resources that need to be used for this, because when you do projects, the first thing you look at is okay, what do you have water? Do you have sewer?”
As of right now there are still/ several Henderson Water and Sewer Utility positions open.
The city of Owensboro currently has eight job openings.
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