Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 29, 1994 TAG: 9411290128
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
More than 100 county workers packed a supervisors meeting last week to ask for a 2 percent across-the-board raise as of Jan. 1, and a restoration of merit-based "step increases" next summer. The employees said the lower end of the pay scale, in particular, needs a boost.
While several board members seemed sympathetic to the request during discussions Monday, others questioned the fairness of applying the supplementary pay hike to only the 140 county employees and not the more than 600 county teachers.
Supervisors Chairman Larry Linkous, with board consensus, told the county staff to figure the cost of a Jan. 1 pay raise for both groups of workers and report it Dec. 12. He also requested revenue projections to show where the money to pay for the raises could come from.
Deputy Assistant County Administrator Randy Wertz said a 2 percent increase for the 140 county employees would cost $26,000. An Aug. 24 staff memo on county finances indicated revenues have exceeded projections, creating a $152,000 surplus. Some of that money has since been claimed.
Wertz said one of the points of a 2 percent increase for county employees alone would be to bring their scale closer to the school system's. The county's 1993 salary study showed school system pay exceeding county pay in all but one of nine categories of actual salaries compared. School system starting pay exceeded the county's in 10 categories.
School Superintendent Herman Bartlett said he would provide whatever information he could to help, but he wasn't aware of a study showing significant disparities between the county and school pay scales.
Turnover statistics that Wertz supplied the board show that, of the 27 workers who have left the county this year, 18 left for better-paying jobs, including eight people working in the county's recycling operation alone, most at the low end of the scale.
Supervisor Ira Long of Prices Fork said he wanted to do something for county workers who would be below the "poverty level" because of low pay. "I think that's a disgrace in this county," he said. He wants the county staff to tell the board the number of county workers who earn less than $12,500. The poverty level for a family of four was $14,763 in 1993, according to the Census Bureau.
Supervisor Joe Gorman and other board members want better data on how Montgomery County's pay scale stacks up to nearby local governments that have comparable populations and staff sizes.
Wertz and County Administrator Betty Thomas gave board members data from a 1993 salary survey the county conducted, and a 1994 survey that Albemarle County just completed.
The county adopted its current pay scale in February 1991, in the middle of the 1991 fiscal year. County employees received a 2.5 percent cost-of-living adjustment in July at the beginning of the 1995 fiscal year, the first such increase in four years. They received merit-based "step increases" that averaged 4.5 percent in the 1992 and 1994 fiscal years. But they received no increase at all in the 1993 fiscal year, Wertz said.
by CNB