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Commissioner Pooler presents county salary-comparison update; some positions below average
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Summary
Commissioner Pooler told the council he updated an older salary study, finding several elected positions and the auditor's HR/payroll role below peer averages while mechanics and drivers are above the median; he offered a spreadsheet modeling a 3% raise and offered to share it with fellow commissioners.
Commissioner Pooler presented an updated salary-comparison spreadsheet to the Blackford County Council on March 4, saying the county's pay for many positions differs from peer counties and that a simple model can show the impact of a 3% raise.
Pooler said he and colleagues revisited the county's previous salary study and attempted to gather salary ordinances from comparator counties but that several—he named Delaware and others—did not supply their ordinances. He said he excluded court and prosecutor salary data from his review because those positions were labeled inconsistently in the materials he was given.
"I've done that for every office going back through here," Pooler said, summarizing comparisons across the highway department, auditor and elected officials. He reported that drivers and the garage mechanic positions are above both the average and the median among comparators while the county auditor and the county's HR/payroll position are below the average and median.
Pooler showed a spreadsheet that highlights differences and calculates the effect of a hypothetical 3% raise, saying the spreadsheet is easy to adjust. "If you were to get a 3% raise this year, that shows what it would go through," he said, and offered to provide the file to Commissioner Goodspeed.
Council members discussed which counties should be used as comparators and whether to exclude larger counties such as Delaware, Grant and Madison to obtain a more like-for-like comparison. The chair suggested narrowing the comparator set; Pooler agreed the list in the earlier study may be too broad.
Next steps: Pooler said he can refine the spreadsheet with a different comparator set or percentage on request and will share the file with staff and other commissioners. The council did not vote on any pay changes during the meeting.
