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Judge’s $1.60/hour proposal prompts commissioners to ask HR and auditors for modeling options
Summary
The court debated a proposed $1.60/hour COLA and alternatives (partial COLA plus merit pools); auditors will model incremental 10¢ increases and options combining a flat COLA with merit pools to produce constrained allocations for final budget decisions.
The court devoted a lengthy segment to county employee pay, focusing on a proposal from the judge to include a $1.60 hourly cost‑of‑living adjustment in the preliminary budget. The judge and HR staff discussed tradeoffs between a flat dollar COLA and merit‑based pools. The judge offered a crude estimate that a $1.60/hour COLA across an assumed 225 employees would cost roughly $750,000 plus load (estimated total ~$875,000). "If you multiplied 468,000 hours by a dollar 60, you come up with about $750,000... If you put the load on that of 16.64%, that's another $125,000," the judge said while discussing the fiscal math.
Commissioners directed HR and auditors to model the fiscal impacts in 10¢ increments and to produce variants: (a) a smaller flat COLA combined with (b) department merit pools with maximum per‑employee caps. The court asked that any merit pool program include stipulations to prevent a single employee receiving the entire department allotment and asked HR to return numbers that show how different mixes affect the overall budget gap. The court acknowledged a large deficit in the preliminary budget and emphasized the need to balance staff retention goals with fiscal reality.
