County will review raises

The classification of two employees recently given pay increases by Jay County Council is facing scrutiny.
The county’s personnel committee will convene at 1 p.m. Monday to review the classification of two retirement center employees after Tammy Davis, the center’s assistant director, told Jay County Council Wednesday she didn’t agree with the decision to hike their wages.
“It’s going to cause problems,” Davis told council members Mike Leonhard, Gary Theurer, Ted Champ, Bob Vance, Mike Rockwell, Jeanne Houchins and Cindy Newton.
The two employees, a maintenance worker and cook/housekeeper supervisor, were given 4-percent raises when council approved increases last week for 13 highway department truck drivers and all other employees with the same job classification in an effort to bring their wages closer to figures from a previous pay plan survey completed by consulting firm Waggoner, Irwin, Scheele and Associates.
Davis suggested she doesn’t believe the employees should be classified the same as truck drivers.
“One of them definitely shouldn’t get the raise,” she said, referring to the maintenance employee. “The other one, if you give her the raise, that puts her up with what I’m making.”
Davis described the maintenance worker as more of a “groundskeeper.”
"He mows, he does snow work, he fixes what he can in the house, light bulbs and stuff, but I have not seen him construct the first thing,” she said.
During discussion, Champ asked what happens to an employee’s wage when their classification is altered.
Auditor Anna Culy explained traditionally the employee’s pay has been frozen until the pay of others in their classification catches up.
“So, they’re going to cost more money at a rate they shouldn’t be getting because they don’t fit this classification,” Champ said, who questioned how the two retirement center employees could be classified the same as truck drivers.   
“These are the things we’ve got to fix. These are the things that somehow got broken. We as a council need to dive into this,” Champ added. “Yes, we’re not going to make everyone happy. We know that. We’ve already done it this month but there are things we’ve got to fix.”
Near the end of the meeting, commissioner Doug Inman said a possibility to address the concerns might be to reclassify truck drivers in their own stand-alone class.
“Then these other five or six (employees) aren’t touched,” said Inman, who will sit on the personnel committee along with Leonard and Theurer.
Meanwhile, council approved  an ordinance for Jay County Commissioners to borrow $257,809 from First Merchants Bank at a rate of 2.309 percent over five years for the purchase of a $343,745 dispatch system for Jay County Sheriff’s Office.

At its August meeting, council originally decided to purchase the system with a seven-year loan from First Merchants, but county attorney Bill Hinkle said the longer loan would end up costing the county more money.
Hinkle explained the seven-year loan would be considered to be a bond, “which would require bond procedure to followed, which would take more time and be more expensive …”
Council decided Wednesday to pay the initial 25 percent — $85,936 — of its contract with Motorola for the system out of the infrastructure fund.
In other business:
•Approved additional funds of $15,000 to the health department for vaccine expenses and $3,500 out of the infrastructure fund for parking lot paving at Jay County Jail
•Approved a transfer of $35,000 from the cumulative capital development fund to contractual services for the funds related to the development of an Americans with Disabilities plan required by law and a road asset management plan needed to apply for matching funds from Indiana Department of Transportation.
•Decided to keep wages for part-time truck drivers at their current rate.
•OK’d highway superintendent Ken Wellman to transfer $11,000 from his department’s gas and lube line item to its equipment line item for a mower.