Commissioners set $0.30/hour baseline for county Field Training Officer pay differential

Bonner County commissioners on Thursday directed staff to set a baseline countywide pay differential of $0.30 per hour for Field Training Officers, after a multi-hour budget workshop that weighed historical usage, departmental differences and administrative options.

The change begins with the Clerk’s Office recommendation and data review. Jessica, a Clerk's Office staff member, presented historical hours and costs for FTO differentials across departments and proposed a conservative baseline tied to typical annual usage. She told the board that the county had recorded about 6,900 FTO hours last year (across dispatch, justice services, probation, jail, sheriff’s patrol, and marine patrol) and had used about 6,100 hours so far this fiscal year; using 7,000 hours as a budgeting assumption produced an objective figure roughly equivalent to a 24-cent hourly baseline.

The discussion focused on two approaches: (1) continue paying a larger differential only when an officer is actively training (the sheriff’s request was to pay an additional $2.50 per hour while actively acting as an FTO); or (2) convert that to a smaller, guaranteed hourly differential paid year-round to employees who hold the FTO designation. Jessica recommended the latter as administratively simpler, advising the board to create a distinct pay code so departments could turn the differential on or off per employee.

Sheriff Wheeler and the sheriff’s command staff described the workload and legal exposure that accompany the training role and urged a larger reward for active trainers; they said the training cycle and frequency vary by department, with dispatch training taking six months to a year while patrol and detention typically use a 14-week minimum cycle. The sheriff’s office reported there are currently 22 designated FTOs across its divisions. The sheriff’s office and commissioners also noted historical inconsistency: Justice Services had been paid $2.50 an hour during an earlier period but the change was not consistently documented with payroll, which led payroll to roll the increase back.

Commissioners and staff examined multiple budget scenarios: clerk staff’s 24¢ baseline (about $17,500 at 7,000 hours), a proposed $15,000–$20,000 budget using rounded-hour assumptions, and a conservative reserve of $22,000 to cover potential increased hiring and training. After deliberation about fairness across very different divisions, the board coalesced around a $0.30-per-hour baseline pay differential to be budgeted for the coming fiscal year, with the pay code approach so departments can enable or disable the differential for individual employees as duties require.

The board did not adopt a motion recorded on the public record as a formal roll-call vote during the discussion; the outcome was recorded as a consensus direction to staff to budget and implement a $0.30/hour FTO baseline differential, establish a pay code, and return any remaining implementation details to auditing and payroll for final configuration. Commissioners also asked the sheriff’s office to validate the number of required FTOs per division so the clerk and auditor can finalize the budget line.

Budget and next steps: staff were directed to (1) implement the differential as a separate pay code so it can be assigned or removed at the department level, (2) budget a baseline amount (staff suggested $17,500–$22,000 depending on the hours assumption), and (3) provide final hour counts and a finalized dollar request to auditing for inclusion in the fiscal budget.

Background: the county has used an active-pay approach in which only employees actually training at a given time received the differential; the new baseline approach is intended to pay the designation-holder for ongoing training readiness and associated liabilities even in months when they are not actively assigned a trainee.

The board’s action affects FTOs in dispatch, patrol, detention, justice services, probation and marine patrol and is structured so that departments retain discretion to manage the designation and pay code per staffing needs.

Budget numbers and other implementation details will be finalized by payroll/auditing and returned to the board for inclusion in the final budget documents.