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Now it is pitching to contract for building maintenance workers, too.

The administration of County Executive Sam Page is asking the County Council to approve a $6.1 million contract as soon as Tuesday with DCM Management, a local property management company that would provide 17 staffers to maintain and repair dozens of county facilities.

County pay doesn’t stack up with the private sector, officials have said, leaving the county struggling to hire and keep maintenance workers.

But the outsourcing contract, broken down by year, would cost about $153,000 per worker — more than double what some county maintenance employees now earn.

And that’s just too expensive, some employees complain. They’d rather see it go to raises for staff.

“It would be a tragedy for this bill to pass,� said public works employee Karen Smith, who earned $43,000 last year, at a council meeting last month. “To suggest we pay a contractor to maintain our facilities is not the solution. Investing in our staff is the solution.�

Local governments nationwide have suffered from staffing shortages in the post-pandemic labor market. And the county transportation and public works department isn’t the only department facing staffing shortages: The county has increasingly relied on costly staffing agencies to provide medical care at the county jail, too. Contracts there cost taxpayers $2.3 million last year and $2.4 million so far this year.

There are now 71 contract medical workers at the jail, said Dr. Paula Oldeg, who directs county corrections medicine and has made $176,000 so far this year. One of the contracts costs the county $132 per hour for workers, she said. A typical nurse at the jail, including benefits, costs about $50 per hour.

Now the county is also considering outsourcing maintenance of 49 facilities totaling 920,000 square feet. Earlier this summer, it awarded the contract to DCM, which has provided commercial maintenance services locally since 1989, said owner Don Musick.

Meanwhile, the county faces a shrinking maintenance staff.

‘Unless something drastic changes’

In 2021, the public works facilities management division had 75 employees in the department, according to . At its peak this year, the division had 52 employees, but at least four have since quit, county records show.

The county “painstakingly� counted the minimum agency staff it needs to pick up the slack, officials said at a council meeting last month. If the council doesn’t pass the bill, the county’s police stations, animal shelter, morgue and women’s shelter could see power outages or loss of heating or cooling, said Joe Hunt, a division manager for facilities.

“Can we afford for any of them to close down?� said Hunt, who earned $117,000 last year.

If approved, the DCM contract will cost $900,000 for the remainder of this year and no more than $2.6 million annually for the next two years. After the first two-year period, the county will have the option to extend the contract for up to four additional years.

At 17 workers, the contract will cost just under $153,000 per worker per year, including service fees. That’s more than double the annual salaries for some public works employees, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis of county personnel and salary data.

The outsourced staffers would help fill chronically vacant positions including carpenters, painters and facility managers. In 2023, the average salary for carpenters and painters was $39,000, and lower-level managers earned between $58,000 and $76,500.

DCM pays its employees more, said the owner, Musick.

“What we pay our people is what the market is,� Musick said.

The county did recently approve a pay bump for workers. But it’s still next to impossible to attract and keep staff with the county’s low pay, said Craig Boyle, who manages maintenance of the county’s vehicles and parking garages.

“Without a pay increase, I will not have a division probably within two years unless something drastic changes,� said Boyle, who earned $94,000 last year.

Contractor questioned for past

The County Council would have to approve a budget high enough to allow for raises, said transportation and public works Director Stephanie Leon Streeter, who earned $150,000 last year.

“It is highly likely we could fill empty positions with qualified staff, saving money over time and assuring a team was in place to address routine, preventative and emergency matters,� Leon Streeter said.

At least one person is also concerned about DCM’s owner.

In a letter to councilmembers, longtime county critic Tom Sullivan pointed to a decades-old controversy involving Musick.

“This is a very questionable contract you should be especially leery of,� Sullivan wrote.

In early 2004, an aide to then-County Executive Charlie Dooley called the director of the region’s Metro transit agency. The aide demanded Metro’s director, Larry Salci, sign a $19 million contract with Musick, a Dooley campaign contributor, to build a 10-story garage in Brentwood, Salci later told the Post-Dispatch.

In 2005, Metro signed off on the deal with Musick’s company, Eager Road Associates.

The county initially paid Musick’s company $14 million for two-thirds ownership of the garage, and then in 2010, it paid another $5.9 million for the rest of the garage — bringing the total cost to nearly a million dollars more than initially expected. A whistleblower lawsuit unsealed in 2012 alleged the second transaction was a bailout for Musick, who was facing a lawsuit over project financing.

Dooley called the allegations “ridiculous and insulting.� The whistleblower suit was later dropped.

Musick said last week that such claims were “vetted and put to rest ages ago.� As for the county maintenance contract, his company won it fair and square over two other bidders, he said.

“I can walk from this contract without a tear in my eye,� Musick said. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.�

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