City of Columbia releases customer response action plan to improve services

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — Not enough staff for the city of Columbia is causing a delay in some services for Soda City residents.

Open house interviews and temp agencies are some solutions to filling the vacancies.

“I would say that I’m really proud of how our staff has responded to these challenges during the pandemic,” said assistant city manager Clint Shealy. “They have worked very very hard during some challenging times to be as responsive as we could be.”

However, the city of Columbia has not been able to be as responsive as customers have grown used to due to short handed staff and increased call log.

The city has roughly 600 vacancies in several key departments. Mayor Daniel Rickenmann says the city hopes to recruit from within.

“We have a large population of 18 to 24 year olds that could be our future workforce,” the mayor said. “We can get them ready through OSHA training, apprenticeships and internships to put them in the marketplace so they’re career ready.”

For the positions that cannot be filled, the mayor says that the city can use third party businesses to help get jobs done. He says that 17 percent of the water division’s backlog deals with landscaping which could be done by a local small business.

“There’s not a possible way we could hire 220 people to fill all these jobs,” Rickenmann said. “At this point, why would we do that? We have an opportunity to grow a small business, take care of the customers needs first and grow a business that’s going to hire and stay here. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

In addition to a shortage of staff and increased volume of calls, the water division is also dealing with aging infrastructure.

“We have a lot of galvanized and unlined cast iron lines that are in the ground that are reaching the end of their useful life. They leak and we got to repair those leaks,” Shealy said. “We have a significant backlog based on staff shortages.”

Shealy says the water division hopes to slowly replace the lines instead of just repair as they are causing more than just leaking problems for customers.

“They may occasionally get some discolored water if we’re not flushing as we need to and that water is not turning over,” the assistant city manager said.

Other city services has also been overwhelmed during the pandemic such as yard waste pickup.

“We saw our yard waste tonnages increase by over four fold in December and January,” Shealy reports.

The trash pickup is back on schedule but the increased call volume has forced the city of Columbia to swap some shifts around so that the call center is staffed during the most crucial times.

“All of this is about making a difference for our community and our staff,” Rickenmann said.

To see more about the city’s customer response action plan, see more details here.