County 5 Agree: Pay Raise on Tap for All County Employees for New Budget Year
Posted June 22, 2018 07:30 am | updated: June 23, 2018*
COLUMBIA COUNTY, FL –
Last night during a marathon budget
workshop, the Columbia County 5 agreed to
give all County employees a 50 cent an hour
pay raise for FY 2019. This amounts to $1040
for each County employee.
The County 5 and County Manager Ben Scott got into a long, sometimes contentious discussion about County employee salaries. The salaries discussed were only those salaries under the direct control of the County Commission (the County 5). This is approximately 370 current employees.
Competitive salaries and employee retention were a big topic, particularly when it came to public works.
With the ramping up of the construction industry, the public works department is having difficulty retaining and hiring some employees.
Commissioner Williams said it was difficult to retain employees when they could go into private industry and immediately get a $10,000 raise.
Slide from the County Manager's PowerPoint
presentation The lack of meaningful detail
and apparent misinformation in Code
Enforcement and Tourist Development led to
confusion.
There was also some question about code enforcement salaries and those at Tourist Development.
Commissioner Nash balked at the lack of information provided to the Board.
Code Enforcement was on the agenda for a $10,000 salary adjustment. The adjustment was contrary to the facts and the truthful history of the performance of the former Code Enforcement chief.
Tourist Development was asking for salary adjustments totaling $30,622.
Commissioner Nash wanted to know how that was broken out among the employees.
The County Manager said he didn't know, but that the director, Paula Vann, was asking for a big chunk.
Commissioner DePratter balked, saying that she just got a $5,000 raise.
County Manager Scott said that at the time she received the raise she wanted more, so he only scheduled $5,000 for last year.
Commissioner DePratter took exception, saying that the Board paid to have her trained.
Commissioner Nash said that in the future he wanted specific details when things like this came before the Board.
He also wanted a breakout of the specifics of the TDC request.
There was also a discussion regarding the salaries for the dispatchers at the 911 call center.
Competitive salaries, retention, and job stress were discussed.
Commissioner Nash thought much of this had been resolved during the special 911 committee meetings that were held a couple of months ago.
Apparently, it wasn't.
*updated: June 23, 2018: added graphic with caption
