Using feedback from White County Commissioners, the Budget Committee spent most of Wednesday’s session considering a budget with a $1.44 property tax rate.
The Committee will resume work Monday on employee raises. One proposal includes an eight percent pay raise for all county employees, with some departments getting more. Commissioner Derrick Hutchings said eight percent may not be enough for the EMS department.
“I think [EMS] needs to be pulled out seperate, like the sheriff’s department and reevaluated individually,” Hutchings said. “And to do that, it’s either going to cost us more pennies or we’re going to have to make other adjustments and other cuts in other places. We don’t have them in the targeted above eight percent portion and I think we need to consider that.”
Commissioner Dakota White, suggested a $2 hourly pay increase instead of a percentage raise.
County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson said both numbers would amount to about a $4000 increase for each employee. Currently, there is a deficit of some $210,000.
Commissioner Kyle Goff suggested a 11 percent raise for county employees. Goff said the funding would come partially from the proposed longevity pay, and the rest would go against the deficit. Goff’s proposal would put the deficit at some $350,000.
Commissioner David Cranford said he supports an employee raise of some sort, particularly for first responders. He said he would favor a raise over 11 percent, but wants to take a look at the numbers.
” I’m not trying to cheap out on our employees,” Cranford said. “I understand that everyone’s concerned and I understand that there’s households that are having struggles and I get that. But we also have employees that we have to pay. We have to pay them market value or they will leave.”
Roughly 75 percent of White County’s employees are within the Sheriff’s office, EMA, or EMS. The committee asked for the complete breakdown of an eight percent raise to see where that would put emergency services. These figures will be presented at the next budget committee meeting.
Another point of contention was the removal of a full time EMA director. Currently, EMA director Matt McBride is a part time employee. If he were full time, his salary would double.
Robinson said the commissioners narrowly favored keeping McBride part time. Robinson said he favored making McBride full time, but he was unwilling to sacrifice the entire budget over it.
Hutchings and Cranford also favor the EMA director position being full time. Cranford said the change would pay for itself.
“I don’t know why it’s just being discounted, but I think it’s something we need to look into,” Cranford said. “There’s a lot of grant money we’ve missed out on because we did not have a full time EMA director.”
Robinson’s new proposal cut an executive office assistant and two sheriff’s deputies. It included four new EMS employees to fully staff another truck, two ambulance remounts, three police cars, and a central maintainence mechanic.
In pennies, $1.06 would go to the general fund. 36 pennies would go to the school system, and two pennies would fund the highway department.
The White County Budget Committee will reconvene Monday. Goff said a budget likely needs to pass the committee at that meeting to ensure it can make it to the full court meeting on July 21.
