MOULTRIE, Ga. — The City of Moultrie, like many other small municipalities, finds itself between the proverbial “rock and a hard place” when it comes to hiring and keeping personnel.

“It’s a tough problem. And there’s no way to dress it up,” said Moultrie City Manager Pete Dillard. “I’ll be blunt. No one wants to work.”

The fire department, police department and utilities department all have vacancies. The police department is down about 10 percent. Dillard said utilities is down at least four people and the fire department has four or five vacancies.

“And these are jobs that have to be covered which means it costs us overtime,” he said.

But Dillard said the problem is more than money.

“We have had some morale issues, but I think we have made progress on that,” he said.

Some of the problem is about money, however. Larger cities and governments can offer more money.

“And we can’t outbid them,” said Dillard.

He noted that vacancies in the utilities department concerns him most, noting that recruiting is tough because not just anyone can qualify for a job that involves thousands of volts of electricity.

As well, Florida is attracting many area linemen in a two-year program to repair storm-damaged utilities in that state. Dillard said linemen can go down there and make a lot of money that smaller communities can’t match.

“I can’t break the city competing with the dollar,” he added.

Dillard said recruiting is tough.

“We may put an ad in the newspaper and get 17 responses, and we might get one person to qualify,” said Dillard on the issue of recruiting policemen. And some just don’t make it through the academy.

He said the police vacancy issue is nationwide.

“In Dallas, Texas, they begin policemen at $52,000 a year. They lost 100 in the past 90 days,” he said.

Dillard said the city is losing three policemen this month to go to work for the state as vehicle inspectors. He said they will make $10,000 a year more than the City of Moultrie can pay.

He said for firemen in Moultrie, an entrepreneur might do well. They are on 24 hours and off 48 hours. Dillard said they can make 90 percent more off the clock than on. But he said being a firemen is a hard job.

Dillard said he has just laid out a plan for firemen that will allow them to grow in pay if they grow in certifications. They can walk in the door and make $23,000 a year. Then as they certify in specialized areas such as the dive team, search and rescue, etc., they can work their way up into the $30,000 range.  He plans a similar platform for the police department.

“I don’t know if this will be an answer to the problems. But we can chip away at them,” he said. “I think we can improve our situation.”

The city is planning a job fair in January.

“We’re going after firefighters,” he said.

And he cautioned, the city doesn’t hire anyone who smokes. That is a policy adopted by City Council in October 2015 to address health coverage issues.