Springfield boosts inspector salaries with ‘market rate adjustment’ to fill vacant jobs

SPRINGFIELD — The city has taken the rare move to reopen union contracts for inspectors, saying they cannot attract enough certified, qualified professionals under the current pay scale.

Facing a never-ending battle to attract building, plumbing and electrical inspectors, the City Council agreed this month with a plan to reopen contracts and immediately raise salaries by 6.5% to 11.5%.

“What we are doing is we are increasing the rates of pay this year between 6.5% at the top end to 11.5% at the entry end in order to attract people into these positions because they are so hard to fill,” said William Mahoney, director of human resources.

The contract with the inspectors, who belong to the National Association of Government Employees Local 1-021, was not due to expire until June 30, 2025, but the city is having such a difficult time filling the positions that it offered to open the contracts, he said.

The market rate adjustment will raise the annual salaries of entry-level inspectors by $13,352 from $65,168 to $78,520. The most experienced inspectors’ salaries will increase $5,731 from a current yearly salary of $86,286 to $92,017, according to contract documents.

Members of the union endorsed the changes in the contract before it went to the City Council for approval, Mahoney said.

The City Council also agreed to extend the current contract for two more years, offering a 2% increase for inspectors for fiscal year 2026 and 2027.

Inspectors are hard to find and for people to even get certified they have to receive state approval to take the exam, Mahoney said.

The city recently had two candidates for open positions but neither lived in Springfield so it had to get a waiver of the requirement that city employees are also residents. One accepted the job and the other declined, he said.

City councilors did not object to the plan but asked how it would impact budgets for this year and fiscal year 2025, which the council passed in May.

There are only 10 inspector positions not all of them are filled. Since the fiscal year ends three weeks after the new raise was passed the impact is negligible, said Cathy Buono, chief administrative and financial officer.

The raises for the next fiscal will likely be paid for with money left over from positions that are funded but not filled. They are needed since the city is falling behind in inspections due to the empty positions, she said.

“We don’t anticipate needing any more money. They never fill all the positions,” she said, adding city officials can always request a transfer from another account if they do find enough inspectors.