Consultants present countywide salary study; options range from full catch-up to phased implementation

Consultants from the Max Group summarized a county-wide classification and pay study and gave commissioners several implementation options to narrow pay compression and align county ranges to market rates.

Becky Bezy, the lead consultant, walked the board through the study’s methodology, including employee questionnaires (except for state-classified positions in DSS and health), job interviews, and a market survey of peer counties. She said the study assigns jobs to grades and pay ranges and models several implementation strategies so the board can weigh cost and compression trade-offs.

Why it matters: consultants recommended bringing pay ranges closer to the market and offered phased options to limit one-year budget impact. The firm presented a full-market catch-up (moving to current market midpoints and ranges), a 96% market option and a 92% market option; each option includes different annual movement assumptions (for example, a 1.5% or a 0.5% per-year service/merit movement in some phased scenarios) and very different short-term costs.

Key consultant points: Bezy emphasized the difference between classifying positions (jobs) and paying employees; the plan treats positions, not individuals, and offers rules for implementation such as blended service formulas where employees recently promoted would not be treated as having full tenure in the higher grade. She also presented a compression analysis showing many employees clustered at the low end of ranges and explained that catch-ups are designed to restore a healthier distribution over time.

Budget and next steps: the consultants said their cost estimates do not include fringe-benefit costs, which staff must add. They recommended giving the county manager discretion to make limited adjustments for disciplinary cases or documented inequities not captured by hire-date data. Commissioners asked about phasing, timing (the salary data collection window was Nov 2025–Jan 2026), and whether to implement changes July 1 or delay adjustments to January depending on colleagues’ COLA choices.

Quotes: Bezy summarized the study’s purpose: “Given a set of duties in a job, what’s an appropriate salary range for that job?” The consultants recommended that the board consider moving toward market alignment while phasing the changes to match the county’s fiscal capacity.

The board did not adopt an implementation plan at the workshop but instructed staff to include recommended options in the formal budget ordinance and to provide cost projections and fringe-benefit additions for final approval.