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Commissioners split on market and merit pay and on expansion of mobile integrated health positions
Summary
Douglas County commissioners debated freezing market pay increases versus keeping a 3.4% market pool, whether to expand mobile integrated health (MIH) positions and how to share costs with city partners; staff to return recalculated mill-levy impacts tied to these personnel decisions.
Commissioners spent significant time on workforce-related budget items.
Compensation: Staff recommended a market adjustment (3.4% pool) and a 1% merit pool for 2027. One commissioner proposed eliminating the market pool and freezing increases after last year's larger adjustments, redirecting funds into a larger merit pool or one-time employee payments. Several commissioners pushed back, saying freezing market adjustments would risk competitiveness and staff retention; others expressed concern about property-tax impacts on constituents (notably households on fixed incomes). The chair summarized that a majority favored leaving the market pool at the budgeted 3.4% and keeping the 1% merit pool for now, but asked staff to return mill-levy scenarios showing consequences of alternative market/merit configurations.
Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) and LDC Fire/EMS positions: Commissioners discussed funding additional MIH positions and whether those positions should be a county-only cost or moved into a shared governance model with the city of Lawrence and other partners. Several commissioners supported funding a team-lead position as a one-time implementation cost while pursuing governance changes to shift some ongoing costs to the shared bucket. Others favored funding both requested positions (two positions) now, noting MIH's early success and potential to reduce emergency-response costs. Staff said any shared-bucket change requires governance discussion and that, currently, expansion would be county-borne.
No final, binding compensation or MIH governance decisions were adopted; staff were asked to quantify budget impacts and provide governance options for further deliberation.
