The Johnson County Council on Friday walked back its earlier vote to give all county employees one-time $750 stipends and made several other deviations from its initial plan for salary increases.
The council spent last week sifting through next year’s $38.1 million budget proposal during several public hearings. The budget is set to be adopted at 5 p.m. Oct. 26.
Council member Rob Henderson on Friday made the case for rescinding an earlier vote to hand out stipends across the board.
“I’m struggling that an employee being raised to the midpoint is also receiving the same stipend as those above the midpoint,” Henderson said. “You have to keep in mind the stipend is a one-time event. We are still achieving a lot to get to parity within job descriptions and narrowing salary gaps.”
The council had approved, on first reading, $503,577 in new ongoing salary obligations for elected officials and employees whose pay falls below the internal midpoint, the median salary for all county employees with similar jobs. The cost of those raises was Henderson’s main reason for proposing fewer stipends, he said.
To give all employees the stipend in addition to raises to the midpoint, the county would have paid out more than $901,000, according to an estimate that was provided earlier in the week.
The council voted 4-2 to give all full-time employees below the internal midpoint the greater of their position’s increase to the midpoint or a one-time $750 raise, but no stipend.
Council members Pete Ketchum and Josh Turner voted against the proposal, and James Ison was absent from Friday’s meeting. Ketchum was the council member who proposed stipends for all. Under the updated proposal, only employees above the internal midpoint would get the $750, at a cost of about $271,500 for 362 employees.
If approved, the county’s new ongoing salary obligation will be higher than $503,577 after the council allowed certain department heads — animal control, fleet maintenance and highway — to raise several salaries above the internal midpoint. But the council denied a request to raise health department salaries despite the extra work they are putting in during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The council accepted several increases above the internal midpoint, but rejected the health department’s proposal to increase nine salaries to the external midpoint, for their work this year and next year managing the coronavirus pandemic locally.
“We fight this fight every year. There’s never enough money. I always feel like my department is underpaid and they deserve much more,” said Dr. Craig Moorman, county health officer. “But no matter what you guys decide to pay them, we will continue to perform our duties … We will also deal with this pandemic, and it has been exceptional this year. The last seven months have been very difficult.”
The council denied the request for raises last week by a vote of 4-3, and asked the health department to revise its budget for second reading. Ison, Myers and Turner voted against the raises.
This comes as COVID-19 cases begin to tick upward again, locally and statewide. In Johnson County, 34 new cases were reported Monday, among 1,581 new cases reported statewide. The department will also provide additional services next year, including running a grant-funded COVID-19 test site and likely distributing COVID-19 vaccines when one becomes available.
Raises for employees in the highway department were intended to make their salaries more competitive with the external market, said Luke Mastin, highway director. Several highway employees, including truck drivers, mechanics and engineers, are hard to keep at the level of pay the county is offering, he said.
“We are competing for those employees from other government agencies and the private sector. We lose these employees after one or two years. They would like to stay but they cannot at that salary,” Mastin said.
Though the council agreed by a vote of 4-3 to Mastin’s initial proposal to raise his employees’ salaries to the external midpoint, he pared down the proposal by $13,000 out of respect for the council’s initial request, he said.
It passed 5-1. Council member John Myers voted against it.
The approved salary proposal for the highway department brought all truck drivers’ salaries to $42,000, which is $227 below the external midpoint, though only about half will be paid that much, Mastin said. The pay for each driver will be determined based on their seniority and pay tier, so only the most experienced drivers will receive the full $42,000. Leftover salary funds will be diverted within the department to roadwork or special projects, he said.
Highway department foremen and other drivers in training for supervisor roles would also receive a pay bump, creating a pay spread based on their responsibilities compared to that of drivers.
Raises to the external midpoint were approved for the bridge and highway engineers, who will each receive a $2,344 raise.
Though his salary is more than $2,000 less than the external midpoint, Mastin removed a request to raise his own salary in the approved proposal.
Salaries for mechanics working in both the highway department and fleet maintenance, a department in charge of maintaining county vehicles, were raised to the external midpoint, an increase of about $3,500 across the two departments.
The council was hesitant to raise fleet maintenance salaries, but Randy Werden, fleet director, was adamant about an increase for one employee he said deserved it. Werden went as far as offering to reduce his own salary by $1,000 so the employee could get a higher raise.
Salary changes for Johnson County Animal Control deviated above and below the internal midpoint, with three ranked animal control officers getting a raise above the midpoint, while three office employees received raises below the midpoint.
The office employees did not get raises to the midpoint because their jobs fall into the same category as other shelter employees who have more responsibilities, said Michael Delp, animal control director. Though the three employees did not get full raises to the midpoint, they still received a significant pay increase of several thousand dollars each, he said.
The three raises for ranked officers above the midpoint were the result of a mislabeling of their positions in the salary study, Delp said. The three were labeled as non-ranked animal control officers, so the study did not accurately capture the wage they should be making based on their job duties as supervisors, he said.
The total budget proposal for 2021 is a 6% increase from this year’s $35.9 million, due to a change in the income tax disbursement which gives counties 14 months of tax revenue for 2021, but only 10 months for 2022, said Mike Reuter, the county’s financial adviser.
As a result, the county can expect to have a surplus of funds next year before a steep drop off in 2022, with hopes of being back to normal by 2023, Reuter said.
