Pulaski County officials continue to be unsure about what they’re supposed to pay certain county employees.
During Monday’s county council meeting, Highway Superintendent Terry Ruff asked for clarification about how long new employees are supposed to be paid a lower probationary wage, before getting their full starting wage, as specified by the county’s salary matrix. “We was told that night that anybody I hired during that year, the first of January, they’d go to the bottom of the matrix, and that’s what I told these guys when I hired them,” he said. “I hired one in February and I hired one in March, and we hired two in November.” That means that whether the employees were hired in February or November, they should all have gotten their raises effective January 1.
But council member Linda Powers said the committee that oversees the salary matrix planned to change that. “We the committee were told that you can only do it on a calendar year,” she explained. “Then when we found out that you can do it on hire date, everybody was in agreement that was asked and talked to about it that that would be a better thing, to go by hire date. So the policy committee double checked that that wouldn’t make any difference to have PTO different from hire-date raises.” However, council members weren’t sure if they had actually taken action to implement that change.
Council President Jay Sullivan felt the four employees in question should get their raise effective January 1. After further discussion, he decided that no action was needed to do that, since that has apparently been the county’s policy up until now.
But Community Development Commission Executive Director Nathan Origer asked whether that decision applies to anyone the county hired during the course of 2017. “I mean, I understand Terry wants to stick up for his employees, but miscommunication between a governing body and a department head and a new employee shouldn’t mean that one department’s employees gets treated differently than the rest,” Origer said. “Miscommunications happen. You don’t fix it by bending the rules for one employee or four employees and not 100 employees.”
Now, the salary matrix committee and the policy committee plan to discuss when the raises should take effect and make a recommendation during next month’s joint session of the county council and commissioners.
