Butler County administrators told the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday that a proposed overhaul of the county pay plan would compress some pay ranges and move many positions closer to market; staff said the cost to bring all positions fully to market would be about $3.8 million, while the working budget target being recommended is about $2.5 million.

The proposal matters because it would change starting and midpoint pay for dozens of county job titles and could reshape recruitment and retention across public safety, public works and administrative departments.

County Administrator Ryan (last name not specified in the record) said staff received a draft pay plan from consultant McGrath that consolidates ranges and maps current titles to new proposed titles and ranges. “The cost to do that was about 3.8 million to get the positions to market,” Ryan said. He told the commission the draft also includes a proposed compression formula that would move employees toward market midpoints over seven years and that staff have proposed a lower budgeted adjustment to make the plan affordable. “We can't afford it,” Ryan said, describing the 2.5 million figure as his recommended focus for the budget negotiations.

The nut of the debate was timing and trade-offs: staff circulated a spreadsheet showing current minimum and maximum pay ranges, market minimums and market midpoints, and a proposed new set of ranges. Commissioners pressed staff about implementation choices — whether to give a flat across-the-board increase, focus on decompression among employees in the same job classification, or prioritize positions with multiple incumbents. Ryan and others warned that applying full market adjustments would “compress” pay and reduce incentives for long-tenured staff unless decompression was funded separately.

Commissioners and staff also discussed recruitment and retention in public safety. The draft differentiates detention officers, road deputies and patrol officers in the proposed ranges; staff noted that existing bonus and hiring incentives (for example, recruitment bonuses) were not fully captured in the market analysis. Ryan said public-safety categories showed the largest gaps compared with larger jurisdictions such as Sedgwick County.

Staff said they plan follow-up meetings with McGrath and with department heads over the next 45–60 days to refine job placements, vet errors (staff acknowledged some erroneous classifications in the draft) and build a final budget recommendation. Staff also proposed a public budget hearing and a separate revenue-neutral rate hearing; commissioners agreed to schedule a revenue-neutral rate hearing next Tuesday evening and additional budget discussions during the commission’s regular schedule.

Public comment at the meeting also reflected tax concerns. Charles Vance, who identified himself as a resident at 349 Bluestem Road, said rising property taxes are “getting hard for people on fixed incomes to absorb” and asked the commission to consider holding or reducing property taxes rather than raising them.

The board directed staff to return with more detailed recommendations, including compression modeling and department-level reviews, and to arrange a briefing with McGrath to explain the methodology to the commissioners.

Looking ahead, staff said the draft pay-plan timeline includes further department interviews, corrections to mistaken job groupings, and a set of prioritized implementation options that fit the fiscal guidance commissioners provide.