Council amends salary statute

The county’s salary ordinance has been adjusted to acknowledge the different schedules worked by sheriff’s office employees.

Jay County Council during a special meeting Wednesday approved the amended 2019 salary ordinance to make clarifications about pay for sheriff’s office employees.

The main change acknowledges the different schedules worked by jail corrections officers and sheriff’s deputies and sergeants. While other county employees have their pay based on a 35- or 40-hour work week, jail corrections officers work 80 hours in a two-week period on a variety of schedule rotations. Meanwhile, sheriff’s deputies and sergeants’ pay is based on 1,952 annual hours on a four-days-on, two-days-off schedule.

The ordinance amendments approved Wednesday by council members Jeanne Houchins, Gary Theurer, Mike Rockwell, Amy Runyon Barrett and Faron Parr, absent Ted Champ and Cindy Newton, also clarify over time for sheriff’s deputies, sergeants and jail corrections officers to be paid at time-and-a-half or given comp time for any hours worked over 171 in a 28-day period. Those rules are in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The other change approved in the amended ordinance corrected a pay discrepancy that resulted in one level of merit protective occupations and law enforcement employees (sheriff’s deputies) being paid more than their superiors on an hourly basis. In order to fix that issue, employees in the job classification Merit POLE C were given a 1-percent raise to an annual salary of $42,184.60.