Meeting of June 30, 2021
6-30-21 Ohio Co. Fiscal Court Special-Called Meeting · Watch on YouTube ↗
Summary
Special-Called Meeting: Wage Scale Adjustment
The Ohio County Fiscal Court held a special-called meeting on June 30, 2021, focused entirely on a single agenda item: adjusting the wage scale for the Jail and 911 Dispatch departments. This followed weeks of work by a wage committee that compared Ohio County's pay rates with surrounding counties (Butler, Grayson, McLean, Breckinridge) and area cities (Beaver Dam, Hartford).
Magistrates and department heads discussed at length the difficulties of retaining staff in the jail and 911 dispatch, citing high turnover, expensive 12-week training periods, and heavy overtime costs when positions go unfilled — dispatch alone reportedly ran nearly $40,000 over budget in overtime this year. Officials noted competition for workers from private employers like Walmart, who can raise wages more easily than a county funded by taxes.
The Sheriff's Office pushed for maintaining a consistent pay gap between supervisors and line staff, requesting that if dispatcher pay went up, the supervisor's pay should rise proportionally to preserve that gap. After some back-and-forth over the numbers on the wage table, the committee's proposal was adopted as the motion on the floor.
The court voted to approve the new wage scale for jail and 911 employees, which also eliminated two now-unused position categories (a
Agenda (11)
- 0:19
Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance
The meeting opened with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance led by the county clerk.
- 1:41
Introduction of wage scale committee proposal
The court explained that a wage committee had met twice since the last fiscal court meeting to develop a wage scale adjustment proposal for the jail and 911 departments, and that a motion needed to be made before discussion could proceed.
- 2:10
Motion to adopt committee wage scale proposal
A magistrate moved to adopt the wage committee's proposed wage scale adjustments for the jail and 911 dispatch departments, based on comparisons with surrounding counties.
- 4:10
Comparison of proposed vs sheriff's alternative wage figures
The court reviewed two wage scale options — the committee's proposal and an alternative requested by the sheriff — comparing dispatcher, assistant supervisor, and supervisor pay rates.
- 7:15
Comparison with surrounding counties' pay scales
The committee presented data on wage scales from Butler, Grayson, McLean, and Breckinridge counties as well as Beaver Dam and Hartford cities to justify the proposed adjustments.
- 10:44
Request to add elected officials back to wage committee
A magistrate requested that the sheriff, clerk, and other elected officials or their representatives be added back onto the wage scale committee for future meetings.
- 12:03
Discussion of funding sources for raises
Magistrates discussed where the money for the raises would come from, including savings from reduced Bluegrass Crossings payments due to COVID, hoped-for occupational tax growth, and restricted COVID relief funds usable for training costs.
- 13:10
Discussion of turnover, training costs, and overtime
Department heads and magistrates discussed how high turnover in the jail, dispatch, and road department leads to costly retraining and excessive overtime, which the wage increases are meant to help address.
- 28:08
Sheriff's request to preserve pay gap between dispatch supervisor and staff
The sheriff explained his request to raise the 911 supervisor's pay proportionally so the gap between supervisor and dispatcher pay remains consistent with the current budget.
- 33:21
Final review of wage table before vote
The court reviewed the final wage scale numbers, comparing proposed rates to current pre-CPI pay and confirming the removal of the clerk and helper aide positions from the scale.
- 36:43
Adjournment
With the single agenda item addressed, the special-called meeting was adjourned.
Motions & votes (1)
- 2:10
passedAdopt the wage committee's proposed wage scale adjustments for the jail and 911 dispatch departments, removing the clerk one position and helper aide categories from the wage scale
Moved by Joe Barnes · seconded by Larry Murphy · unanimous roll call: Joe yes, Moses yes, Barnes yes, Johnston yes
Transcript (30 segments)
- 0:00
[Music] on this uh 30th day of june 2021 at 4 30 p.m i'm going to ask our county uh clerk best ralph the ladies and a prayer and a pledge to the flag and the flags right there lord we just thank you for this day lord we just thank you for the sunshine and all the blessings that you have blessed this county with or we just ask you as we go on discussion to have open minds and to keep in mind that we're here to serve the people and it's not about us lord and just help us to make the right decision that would uh with jewett lord and lord we just thank you for uh the past year and a half that we have survived it and you've given us all strength to pull together to work through the coca to kept our county
- 1:14
safe jesus name we pray we thank you for forgiving our sins or we just ask your mercy always in jesus name we pray amen amen of the united states of america and to the republic for which it is [Music] [Applause] has met twice in this uh since our last fiscal court meeting and i think to keep this motion i mean this meeting in order i believe one of the masters that's on the wage committee we need to make a motion before we actually discussed it okay well i'll go ahead and make a motion on the wage scale that we've got before us it's kind of what the committee has all talked about we've kind of gone back and forth
- 2:29
and kind of compromised after we looked up a lot of information from surrounding counties and i'll start with motion so then we can get a second and go into discussion and get everybody else's opinions i'm sorry second but larry moore a few emotional joe barnes second by uh larry murphy and just you know i'm sure everybody can do we have enough copies for everybody well anyway we can pass it around or whatever the main thing is i mean that's what everybody want to hear is uh we're looking at doing a adjustment on the jail and 9-1-1 as of right now at this time of course we're still doing the uh cpi on the rest of the county uh like we had talked about before but um that's where we we've we've looked at some of the other departments across the surrounding counties and and then also throughout uh you know like we even looked at the uh
- 3:42
with the sheriff's the the cities and got all that information and that's how we come up with these recommendations so it'll kind of get the ball rolling and what's the alternate i'm saying they're proposed so that is going to be why like i see an offering for one over here alternative yes i believe the top first one is what the uh uh okay the first one is what y'all did in committee the second one was just something that uh and through and therefore you'd look at today as as you could do it instead of the proposal because one proposes what this committee uh decided on a few days ago the second one is what the sheriff is requesting oh that's the figures he requested well some aren't some aren't dependent on joe did you want to explain it a little further detail after we talked
- 4:55
about it they want to keep the uh the averages or the distance in between the uh different uh positions the same the scale difference you know they became between the wages so if you look at here and then you've got this right here well actually like i said yes because it's only in the one person is not attacks a little bit higher nonsense and the top line highlighted is what we're currently at yes okay so the proposed is is a total of 47 dollars an hour and the bottom is 48.02 in our well you might want to break it down by class yeah we 911 dispatch oh you've added it full-time part-time yeah from 15 to 1491 uh proposed assistant supervisor 1550 assistant supervisor 1541
- 6:07
supervisor 17 and alternate is 1770. right that's the difference that we have there these were the only changes that was made that and removing two positions the clerk won and the helper aide in our wage scale yeah we didn't we didn't have any better than those positions that's on the first but that's just see up here so it's this is an effort to try to keep things more con consistent right right you know after rip pointed out his recommendations their day and you know what they were seeing with uh you know what they thought was the surrounding counties you know we we dug into it and we've got all the information here on on butler grayson youngbird mclean breckenridge uh city of beaver dam city hartford and and then and these are after the cpi adjustment
- 7:32
yeah we need to account for the cpi in now because everybody's gonna get cpi yeah 1.4 not on top of it right well we've already done the cpi so if there's if we race at two dollars instead of raising it two dollars you'd raise it like a dollar seventy five just about everybody got a quarter an hour raise anyway so that would that now yeah yeah i can get it so yeah this is showing where we are american county wise i mean butler county is the only one that's really love us they are and uh 9-1-1 nobody we're close to a couple now i believe breckenridge has already done something not too far back to try to get keep their help and i don't know that any other counties have adjusted or not and i believe these i believe the
- 8:46
guys we was with up there at uh you know once again a meeting the other day forever i believe they said that that they they had done one not too long ago and but doesn't they uh i don't know if we get any copies no but but it's reflected here so this is that what they're getting theirs after they've adjusted butler county bumping theirs up as on july 1st they jumped two dogs in the place now which one do you talk about that's 9115 is that yes that's the that's that's new that's definitely i think they were so they were down there like 12 15. yeah when they jumped up because they were 1406 and 14 15. so that kind of put them everybody yeah yeah we were talking to speak from mclean county wasn't it the plane kind of or something yeah it was and now you know i think what we're gonna do you know going ahead we're gonna have to look at this more you know almost every year you know so we don't get because it wasn't too long ago which i i say wasn't too long ago but