Leflore County workers are in for a $75-per-month across-the-board pay raise, starting April 1.
The county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the pay hike — which applies to both salaried and hourly workers — during a special meeting Monday.
The raise is projected to cost the county $200,000 per year. The raise will be reflected in the hourly and overtime rates for workers and will apply to part-time staff on a pro-rated basis.
The board considered whether to offer across-the-board or merit pay raises to county workers — or some mix of both — before settling on the $75 hike. Several county department heads who attended the meeting said that a general raise was needed before topping off individual employees’ incomes.
Youth Court Judge Kevin Adams, who also oversees the county’s Juvenile Detention Center, said his hourly employees desperately need a raise while his salaried employees make significantly less than their colleagues elsewhere in the state.
“We need to raise the floor before looking at some merit raises,” Adams said.
The motion approving the across-the-board raise on Monday indicated that future pay hikes would likely be tied, at least in part, to employee performance and written evaluations.
Although District 4 Supervisor Wayne Self expressed serious concerns about moving toward a merit system — pointing to what Self considered biased assessments of some of the District 4 Unit System workers — other supervisors, including board President Anjuan Brown and District 1 Supervisor Phil Wolfe, said they backed giving department heads the discretion to reward hard-working employees. Before any merit raises take effect, though, the board indicated that it would review its system of written employee evaluations.
The board’s decision on the pay hikes came after a lengthy discussion of the county’s current budget as the supervisors searched for a way to pay for the raises without dipping into the county’s cash reserves.
With most county departments operating at or near budgeted projections, the county’s current budget — which began Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30 — included little wiggle room for additional expenditures.
“We’ve been going into our reserves for the last few years,” said Leflore County Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham. “We don’t have enough excess reserves to keep eating into.”
Abraham reported that, although the county budgeted for an increase in revenue this year, actual collections of real and personal property taxes were down about $260,000 through the first five months of the fiscal year.
Abraham said it wasn’t immediately clear what the cause of the dip in collections has been. He said he would need to analyze the tax rolls with county Tax Collector Annie Conley.
The sale of county-owned land to business prospects in the area has brought in $136,000 in revenue this year. Substantial reductions in the cost of insurance also saved the county cash, and refinanced bonds are also projected to save the county over $100,000 in coming years.
Although those savings put extra money in the current budget, “that’s the money that’s offsetting the shortfall in real and personal property,” Abraham said. “Until we analyze that, we’ve got a problem.”
A rebate on 75 percent of Abraham’s salary as chancery clerk — which should bring in about $150,000 this year and next — did add additional breathing room in the current budget. Because he is drawing state retirement benefits, the county pays him 25 percent of his normal salary and is refunded for the rest.
Since Abraham is currently campaigning for District 1 supervisor and will vacate the chancery clerk’s post at the end of the year, that source of funds will dry up when his successor takes office in 2016.
Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
