BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Bradford County commissioners debated how much of a pay raise to include in next year’s budget among other items discussed during their second budget workshop last week.
County Manager Scott Kornegay provided three numbers to the board representing the cost of a 3%, 4% and 5% cost of living adjustment for employees. The low end added around $121,000 to the budget. The high end was around $201,000 more.
Commission Chairman Danny Riddick suggested another 5% pay raise this year because of inflation, saying soon people are going to be paying $1 an egg. Clerk of Courts Denny Thompson said the federal government’s inflation-based COLA for Social Security was 2.5%. Kornegay said the Consumer Price Index for goods and services was 3.2%.
“I will say this,” Riddick said, “we have some very, very good employees, and if you want to keep them, you need to pay them. That’s the bottom line.”
Commissioner Carolyn Spooner suggested a compromise at 3.5%.
“I’m just thinking about people like in our road department and stuff like that. We’ve got a lot of people that don’t really make a lot of money. So that’s what I’m looking at,” Riddick said.
“It’s not that they’re not worthy of it. They’re worthy of 10% if we could afford to do it, but when we’re looking at conserving, cutting back on our budget, we can still provide an increase, but at a reasonable amount,” Spooner said.
Commissioner Diane Andrews agreed, saying she thought after 5% last year, they could go with a smaller percentage this year.
“We say we’re trying to cut, and then we keep spending,” Commissioner Chris Dougherty added. He said his COLA working for a profitable company was 3%. “I know that we’re not here to make a profit. We’re here to provide services. But we need to break even at least and still have the reserves for a rainy day.”
He agreed the county has excellent employees, and that should be considered, as should they years there were unable to give pay raises and the “very generous” raise given last year.
“We really need to consider where we are fiscally and where we’re going to be next year,” said Dougherty, suggesting smaller annual adjustments instead of making 5% the standard.
Thompson pointed out that money the county has been earning interest off in its reserves will be gone once the county purchases the fairground debt for $1.7 million and the city has withdrawn $4 million for its utility project.
Riddick said he could understand, especially considering the fairgrounds acquisition. The consensus was to plan for a 3% pay raise.
More employees to reduce overtime
In other budgeting matters, Fire Chief Ben Carter proposed saving on what the department spends on overtime pay by hiring three new employees. Hearing his presentation, commissioners agreed he should move forward immediately with the hires.
Because of the 24-hour shifts, fire rescue employees work one day on and get two days off. Over the span of two weeks, each works an average of 112 hours per pay period. Every hour above 80 is paid at time and a half, and this is considered “extended work week compensation.”
But in addition to the overtime built into their schedule, there is the overtime that is paid every time an employee takes on an additional shift. They could be called on to fill in for someone who is taking personal leave or is out sick, or they could be working a public event. These employees are already working over 80 hours, so all these additional hours are also paid time and a half as well.
Part-timers, of which the department has around 17, are too often unreliable, according to Carter. They are loyal to their primary employer where they can pick up their own overtime hours.
Many of Bradford’s fire rescue employees work no additional overtime. A few work quite a bit, including one ambitious employee who added more than $30,000 to his annual pay by taking on additional shifts.
Whether that money is paid to one employee or three doesn’t matter, Carter said. While adding three additional employees won’t eliminate all additional overtime, he aimed at cutting the number of hours by 50%, saving nearly $82,000 even with the additional staffing. (That’s more than $345,000 paid in overtime last year minus the cost of three more employees.)
Carter called this a minimum cost savings. Dougherty said he would like to see even more, suggesting that the department’s senior employees who work 40-hour weeks also do more to help cover shift work. Carter gave examples how they do that, covering public events and shadowing new and inexperienced employees.
Capital Improvement Plan revised
The Capital Improvement Plan was updated since the first workshop, adding in the cost estimates for several chip seal road projects, bringing total capital outlay for public works, the courthouse and fire rescue to nearly $14.4 million this year. This included three multimillion-dollar state-funded road projects as well as the $1.83 million the county has requested from the state for courthouse improvement projects. This year also includes the purchase of a replacement ambulance and fire engine.
Next year’s $5.1 million in capital improvements includes the purchase of a new ambulance, fire engine and fire tanker with requested state dollars. It also includes a grapple truck for public works purchased with state grant dollars for mosquito control, which will also be working harder to spend its fund balance with additional mosquito spraying and larvicide treatments.
The county also has a grant to construct a boat ramp at Sampson Lake and $2.3 million to resurface County Road 21B next year. In case the legislative appropriation for courthouse improvements is not approved this year, next year’s Capital Improvement Plan includes more than $480,000 to begin saving for that work.
It total, the CIP includes $4.53 million in county money over the next two years and nearly $15 million in state funding.
