Another important
issue I've been working on is raises for M&C (Management and
Confidential) employees. These are all the County non-union
employees, usually in management positions or other positions of
responsibility. Their salaries are set by full Board resolution
every January and they've had one raise in nine years. The average
Otsego County Department Head makes an average of $12,000 less than
their colleagues in other upstate NY counties. At least a dozen M&C
managers make less than people they manage.
When an M&C
employee, and especially a Department Head, resigns or retires, we
cannot, as you can imagine, find anyone to come to Otsego County at
the same salary (and no one currently working in their department
wants a promotion to a low-paying job with no history of raises). So
we have been advertising these positions at much higher rates, with
predictable and understandable protests regarding the injustice of
continuing to pay remaining employees at such a low rate. As a
result of this process, for instance, the Deputy Director of the
Office for the Aging, a new (and, I think, very high-quality) hire,
now makes more than the Commissioner of the Department of Social
Services.
Last year, the
Performance Review and Goal Setting Committee, along with Treasurer
Dan Crowell and Personnel Director Penney Gentile, created a
reasonable raise schedule for one year, providing everyone with a 3%
raise, and $200/yr increase for every year of service up to five
years. This was a stopgap measure, because – and this is the
essential piece – we need a perpetual salary scale which determines
raises – with a merit component – as automatically as possible,
each year.
But even this
stopgap measure was defeated, allegedly in favor of a salary study,
which was proposed last fall and has just gone out for bid, for the
second time. It will not be ready for the next salary resolution, at
the January, 2018 full Board meeting.
Len Carson, a Rep
from Oneonta, has been working with Dan and Penney this year to
create another stopgap raise proposal, and it looks about the same as
last years (which, to be fair, was hashed out and edited and debated
and was about as good as something like that is going to get). It
will cost less than $150,000, which is about one third the cost of
one of the plow trucks we bought last year.
What needs to
happen is that the current one-year raise needs to go into effect in
January, and then the salary study needs to be carefully integrated
into the personnel and budget process during 2018. Our employees –
almost universally of high quality – must be compensated fairly.
We cannot continue to kick this can down the road.
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