After taking a week to consider whether to give county employees a 4% or 5% raise this year, Commissioner David Lee ended up proposing something different: 6%.
His fellow commissioners quickly agreed.
Commissioners last week debated a cost-of-living adjustment, noting the national inflation rate was projected to be 5.9% this year.
Commissioners had budgeted for a 3% COLA, but Chairman Jerry Daniels and Commissioner Bruce Symes last week said they were ready to approve 5%.
They indicated they were open to a larger amount. Symes pointed to the inflation rate as a need to increase salaries. Daniels said he wanted the county to be competitive to attract and retain employees, and noted some departments are currently short-staffed.
Lee, who tends to run on the more conservative side when it comes to financial matters, said he needed more time to mull over the amount.
Discussion with citizens led him to believe an even larger increase was necessary.
“The long and the short of it, if we’re interested in keeping quality employees, we need to pay them what they’re worth,” Lee said.
The salary increase will be across the board, and includes raising starting salaries. The change is effective starting with the current pay period.
Commissioners, though, decided not to approve any sort of merit increase.
Daniels said the commission has previously discussed setting a minimum starting wage of $15 an hour, but hasn’t yet done so and many positions are under that rate. Several employees are earning somewhere in the $13-an-hour range, so this will help boost those lower wages.
Health insurance rates
Commissioners heard a bit of unexpected good news when it came to, of all things, health insurance rates.
Turns out, the county will save 29.38% on health insurance costs for the coming year.
“That’s incredible, folks,” Phil Drescher with Bukaty, the county’s insurance representative, told commissioners.
