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Employee Raises Are Included in Marshall County’s $27 Million Budget for Fiscal Year 2020

File Photo Marshall County Commissioners Scott Varner, left, and John Gruzinskas listen to discussion during a past commission meeting.

Marshall County commissioners authorized base pay increases Tuesday morning, bumping starting wages for county employees and law enforcement by $2,500 a year as part of the county’s overall $27,235,665 budget.

Non-EMS and non-law enforcement employees had their base pay increased from $27,500 to $30,000, while law enforcement’s base pay was increased from $38,500 to $41,000 annually. County Administrator Betsy Frohnapfel said the raise affects around 120 employees across the county.

Frohnapfel said the regular pay increases are a key component of the county’s plan to attract and retain talent in the county. The increases will take effect beginning July 1 at the start of the new fiscal year.

“Our commission has been slowly building up the base pay for our employees over the last few years, to bring it up to mid to high range of Class I counties,” she said. “That’s so we can attract good people. We want to be able to attract qualified employees to do the work within the courthouse.”

Sheriff Kevin Cecil said that while the additional money is much appreciated, the sheriff’s office struggles to attract new talent in the first place, and new recruits often cannot be hired because they fail to qualify after testing. For years, Cecil said, he has been pushing for a base pay increase for officers, rather than a pay raise.

“Nobody wants to be a cop anymore,” Cecil said. “The county has been very generous with giving pay raises and things like that every year — they give anywhere from $750 to $3,000 or $4,000 every year. But for years, I’ve been trying to tell them to put that pay raise toward the base salary. They’re not losing anything, and then if somebody leaves, it’s still in the budget. … If the starting pay is $38,500, and you’ve given $15,000 over the years in raises, why not give at least half of that to base pay so they can start at $45,000?”

Cecil said that when he tested to become an officer, he was among about 100 other applicants; at the most recent test, however, he was unable to find eight people to apply. Furthermore, when applicants do complete testing and a background check, Cecil said it’s not uncommon for so few of them to remain that he was unable to pick from the shallow pool of talent.

“Eight people might take a test, and five, maybe six of them will pass, if we’re lucky,” he said. “Then, of those six, three won’t pass a background test. … I have maybe two people to pick from, and by code, I need to have three people in a pool to pick from, and then we have to give another test. It takes months and months to do the backgrounds, and by the time that all passes, I might only have two, and then I can’t choose them!

“The $2,500 is nice. … I need some incentive that’s going to attract people.”

Other budget line items of note include the county Ambulance Authority, which had its expenditures nearly doubled from $735,750 to $1,434,278; the county commission’s own expenditures were more than halved, from $3,941,248 to $1,811,104; and economic development funding was increased by almost $1 million, going from $763,761 to $1,714,212.

In total, general government expenditures dropped from $14,596,734 to $11,877,843.

The grand total of expenditures is down slightly from last year’s budget of $29,182,038.

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