Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, January 21, 2001

There's a chapter in Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" wherein the Yankee argues with some sixth-century peasants about cost-of-living disparities.
   Basically, he tells them how much more money working people will be paid in the future, but at the same time, points out that their wages won't buy nearly as much. The sixth-century peasants easily grasp the higher wages, but not the inflation, and wish they could live in this bountiful future.
   Business columnist Scott Burns offered a similar lesson in his column last week, alerting us to a cost-of-living calculator at homefair.com. Burns used Palo Alto, Calif., and the annual salary of $150,000 as a basis for comparison to Dallas ($55,201), Austin ($58,204), Houston ($49,606) and San Antonio ($47,014).
   Medieval attitudes
   The answer to the next obvious question is: Corpus Christi, $49,720.
   Burns' point was that industries looking to expand or relocate would notice this, and be inclined to move to Texas.
   But, while that may be true of industries, we individuals apparently are still pretty medieval in our grasp of the Connecticut Yankee's point. Those involved in headhunting here have found that someone making $49,720 here would jump on $150,000 there, and those who make $150,000 there would dismiss an offer of $49,720 here.
   "I've had people literally cry in my office because they thought they wouldn't be able to live on what they'd be paid here," said Rey Robles of Unique Employment Services.
   $60K is a lot here
   Robles recently placed a man who had been making $70,000 in Dallas into a management position here starting at $45,000.
   "He hesitated for a couple of weeks. But I think he did some research on Corpus Christi and other areas and found out on his own that it was a substantial amount of money to start at in this area."
   Jeff LeBeau of the placement firm L.K. Jordan & Associates said anyone making $60,000 or more in Corpus Christi is highly paid. He worked recently with a client who made that much as a teacher in the Northeast. She was looking for an accounting position, and he told her she wasn't going to find anything here paying that much.
   Family is big draw
   LeBeau, a transplant from Chicago, also works the cost-of-living angle when trying to recruit, though he thinks it's a bit overblown except for real estate prices. He sold a house in Chicago for $200,000 that he figures would have fetched $80,000 here, but finds his other living costs to be comparable.
   "If you want to pull somebody out of an Austin or a Houston, the thing that brings them is that they have family here."
   That's what brought him here. His wife is from Alice.
   Another angle he pushes in his recruitment efforts is quality of life, which he said is not at all overblown. He tells clients what he has found to be true: "The environment takes care of the salary."
   Tough at the top
   The higher the position, the harder it can be to sell the idea that a lower cost of living will offset the lower salary.
   "It does come into the discussion, but it usually comes into the discussion when I'm trying to convince someone to come down here who wants more money," said City Manager David Garcia, who has been struggling to find a new aviation director since Bonnie Allin's departure in August.
   "The reality is that in a lot of the markets where I recruit, rather than the cost of living in the specific locality, you're dealing with a national labor pool. And what people want to know is how do they compare to other people in their comparable position on a national basis.
   "So it really has not been a very effective argument for me in the recruitment mode. And it really does not work in our biggest skill areas, which are engineers, technology types, computer people. They're just looking at the bottom-line dollars."
   Relativity put to the test
   Garcia's $135,000 salary, incidentally, would be $407,279 in Palo Alto dollars. Here are some other interesting salary comparisons: County Judge Richard Borchard, $78,819 here, $237,787 in Palo Alto; county commissioners, $53,477 here, $161,334 in Palo Alto; County Commissioner Oscar Ortiz, who gets $55,081 because he appealed to the county's grievance committee for a raise, $166,173.
   In Santa Clara County, where Palo Alto is located, members of the board of supervisors, which are California's equivalent to county commissioners, are paid $94,329. That's $30,604 in Corpus Christi dollars.
   Borchard wouldn't venture whether he's worth $237,787, or whether commissioners are worth more than $160,000, even in Palo Alto dollars. But he did say he was satisfied with what he earns.
   "I'd rather make what I'm making here, and live here, than make what I'd make there, and live there."
  
  

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