County system to be reviewed

Copyright 2017, The Commercial Review

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Job descriptions and compensation will be reviewed for all county employees.

Jay County Council on Wednesday approved spending almost $31,000 to contract with management consulting firm Waggoner, Irwin, Scheele and Associates of Muncie to update the county’s job classification and compensation study.

The board also tabled a request to appropriate funds for firearms equipment for Jay County Sheriff’s Office and approved additional funding for the hiring of a part-time employee for Jay County Retirement Center.

Council president Jeanne Houchins brought the recommendation from the personnel committee, which she sits on along with fellow council member Ted Champ and commissioner Doug Inman, that the county’s job classification and compensation system be updated at a cost of $30,932 plus a travel reimbursement. The update will include consultants meeting with county officials, reviewing all job descriptions, conducting an internal and external salary analysis, conducting a Fair Labor Standards Act analysis for each job description and preparing a report with findings and recommendations.

“It will do a complete review of all the departments, all the different classifications,” said Houchins. “It will just do a real good re-evaluation of the pay system.”

Council had already put in place a system by which to review individual job classifications upon request from department heads each March. It had received requests last month for reviews for employees of the jail, 911 service, highway department, Jay Emergency Medical Service and the retirement center. (No additional requests came in since the Feb. 8 meeting when council agreed to extend the deadline after several department heads said they had not received notice.)

Council decided to go beyond that handful of reclassification requests and look at the entire system, which Waggoner, Irwin, Scheele first developed in 2011. It reviewed job descriptions and performed a salary analysis again in 2015.

The update approved Wednesday by council members Cindy Newton, Mike Rockwell, Bob Vance, Faron Parr and Houchins, absent Ted Champ and Gary Theurer, should be complete by September, said Houchins.

The county’s budget process is finalized in September, which could cause a time crunch in implementing any potential salary changes. After the meeting, council members clarified that if time is an issue they could choose to approve changes to job classifications only and delay salary changes until the 2019 budget process.

For the second meeting in a row, council tabled a request from the sheriff’s office to appropriate $8,000 for firearms equipment. As they did at the previous meeting, council members expressed frustration that Sheriff Dwane Ford was not in attendance to explain his request.

After reviewing guidelines following the meeting, auditor Anna Culy said this morning that the request did not need to be submitted to council for its approval.

Council approved an additional appropriation of $17,880.24 for part-time wages at the retirement center at the request of director Patti Clevenger. She explained that adding a part-time employee at 28 hours per week would help cover weekend hours and absences for illnesses, thus reducing compensation hours she and assistant director Tammy Davis are earning by taking on extra shifts.

“There’s just a great need right now,” Clevenger said. “It would take a lot of pressure off of us to work all of those extra hours.”

In other business, council:

•Appropriated $111,031.13 in innkeepers tax funds for Jay County Visitor and Tourism Bureau’s 2017 budget and $5,000 to help pay for a service contract for radios for fire departments within the county. Both items had been approved at the February meeting.

•Updated its salary ordinance to set pay for deputy coroners at $150 per call and to adjust the salary for the executive director of Jay County Community Corrections to $50,335. Those items had also been approved in February.

•Appropriated up to $25,000 for financial consultant Greg Guerrettaz to help with the 2018 budget process. While making the funds available, council members agreed that the need for Guerrettaz’s services should be limited this year after he was in Jay County for six extensive meetings in 2016.

•Appointed Theurer to the county’s oversight committee.