Cumberland County employees will receive a six percent raise, in an effort to make the county more competitive.
Cumberland County Mayor Allen Foster said the goal is to reach a 12 percent raise for county employees in the 2025-2026 fiscal year budget. Foster said that number came from a recommendation the county received after conducting a pay study.
“Certain departments have had a lot of turnover for years and we have done this before,” Foster said. “This is not the first time we’ve done this study and the recommendation is to redo it every four or five years. We are probably a little bit behind that, so with some of the turnover and with it being just time for this to occur they decided to go ahead and do it and just see where we were.”
Foster said the six percent raise will be backdated to January and county employees should receive a check in the next couple of weeks. Foster said he hopes the raises will show that the county is doing everything it can to best compensate employees.
“I would hope that when the whole thing is put in place it would,” Foster said. “You know, the county commission has made a definite commitment to the employees with this. So I think that they are working hard in good faith to trying and get to where the consultants said and so definitely it’s a great step and it’s a positive for our employees for sure.”
Foster said the commission also requested that employees be paid on their steps of experience.
“That will not likely get everybody to their proper step of experience,” Foster said. “But this will probably take several budgets to get it all in place.”
Foster said it’s great to see the county be in a position to be able to afford raises for its employees. Foster said the county commission will further discuss and look to approve the additional six percent raise this summer as budget discussions start to take place.
The Commission approved the salary changes during a special called meeting.
