The Macon County Board of Commissioners checked off one of their most important goals for the fiscal year last week when they approved a new pay scale for county employees.
Across-the-board pay revisions have been in talks since before the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why a solution has taken longer to devise than expected. However, it has remained a top priority for County Manager Derek Roland and a select committee of reviewers because of the implications it has for the organization’s level of service. The county hasn’t adopted new minimum salary levels for each of its positions since 2014, leaving employees worse off than those in similar jobs in other counties.
Between compensation issues and the hazards of working in the pandemic, several county agencies are facing a crisis of hiring. This is especially true for government functions that spend the most time interacting physically with citizens, such as the Sheriff’s Office and the Health Department. Roland said the number of vacancies in the county government right now is too big of a problem to ignore.
“We have 21 vacancies within our public safety department alone,” Roland said. “Eighteen of those vacancies are within health and human services, and we have eight more throughout the organization. Now, at 47 vacancies, that’s about 13% of our 360-employee full-time workforce.”
The new pay scale offers raises to employees in nearly 200 different positions in 20 different departments. Most of these employees will see increases in their annual salaries of $4,000-$5,000, but some key jobs in the hardest-hit departments, including physician extender, detective and 911 addressing coordinator, are slated for raises north of $10,000 per year. Raises will also scale up with years of experience. A few positions were graded down to lower salaries in the pay study, most notably the sheriff, but these changes will only be implemented if a new applicant is hired – existing employees will not have their salaries cut.
“Nobody is getting a pay decrease,” Roland said. “Their position was just regraded… that means if we were looking at somebody coming in right out of the gate, we would not need to recruit them at [the previous pay grade].”
Dozens of county employees, particularly those from health and safety professions, attended the commissioners’ meeting to show their support for a new pay scale. Sheriff Robert Holland, who has requested better pay for his staff for years, said that the new pay scale was a critical step towards not only filling vacancies, but also retaining employees whose commitment to the county hasn’t wavered under extreme conditions.
“For years, we’ve done a little bit and we’ve put a band-aid on everything,” Holland said. “This is peeling away that band-aid and fixing it.”
The commissioners voted unanimously in support of the new pay scale, but they hit a bit of dissent when it came time to talk about the American Rescue Plan. The county has received $6.94 million from the coronavirus relief effort. Roland says that many counties are using that funding to supplement employees, so if Macon County doesn’t do the same, it still might not be able to compete for employees with its neighbors even with a new pay scale.
“If we don’t follow suit with what we’re seeing take place in counties not only in our same state, not only counties across the nation but counties that touch our boundaries… we risk leaving here today and being in the same position that we’re in,” Roland said.
Commissioner Paul Higdon raised concerns that the proposal was not put forth for the board to review in advance like the pay scale was. The funding isn’t authorized for unilateral spending and payroll is one of the select approved expenditures, but even so, he felt that $6.94 million was too much to use hastily.
“That’s $7 million of taxpayer money being allocated without any discussion,” Higdon said. “I feel kind of blindsided.”
However, the plan to use the emergency funding to temporarily supplement payroll still passed unanimously. Under the new policy, all full-time and part-time county employees will receive a raise of $2 per hour that will last for 3.5 years, dated back retroactively to last spring and lasting through October 2024. Emergency Services Director Warren Cabe, who served on the review committee, said it was important to the team not to use a lump sum or several larger payments to supplement employees because the impact on hiring wouldn’t last long enough. He feels this method strikes the most practical balance of making a noticeable difference for employees and being viable for the county to maintain in the long-term.
“We have to be careful,” Cabe said. “We drafted a plan that we thought was sustainable.”
The Macon County Board of Commissioners will meet again on Tuesday, Nov. 9 at 6 p.m. in the boardroom at the Macon County Courthouse.