The wage freeze that Duchesne County employees have been subject to for the past five years has been lifted with the recent adoption of a new step and grade salary and wage scale.
That means county employees may receive wage increases and commissioners could see their salaries increased 43 percent.Although the pay schedule is still undergoing revisions, commissioners adopted the document realizing they "may have to make changes because of budgetary constraints."
The pay recommendations were made to the commission by a specially formed salary study committee, which spent months reviewing options.
What the county wants to do, explained commissioner John Swasey, is bring the salaries and wages paid to their employees up to par with those of what employees in similar-size counties are receiving. The step and grade scale went into effect Nov. 1.
Under the terms included in the new pay schedule, employees would receive a 4.3 percent raise for each "grade" they advance in a position. Grades will be based on job description and responsibility, which are still being defined, said Swasey.
A "step" represents one year of employment for full-time employees, and two years of employment for part-time employees. For each step, or new year of employment up to 10 years, an employee will receive a 2 percent raise. After 10 years, a flat pay raise will be established.
Pay raises for five of the county's 10 elected officials - clerk, treasurer, auditor, assessor and recorder - have been proposed at 12 percent, with no additional pay raises for a four-year period. That increase too is contingent on available revenue, says Swasey.
The tentative step and grade scale also proposes raising the salaries for county commissioners to a level comparable with those of the elected officials in the county.
Commissioners currently earn $19,981 a year. The designated commission chairman makes slightly more, at $20,581 a year. Under the proposed step and grade scale, commission salaries would increase by $8,597 or 43 percent to bring them up to a wage comparable to those of other elected officials in the county.
Salaries paid to the sheriff and county attorney also fall far short of their peers in similar class counties, and should be adjusted said Swasey.
Before a pay raise can be approved for any elected official, public hearings must be held. The public hearings would be included as part of upcoming discussions scheduled for the 1996 budget.
"We need to bring our people in line with others in the same class of county. I know the taxpayers and voters are going to have a fit over this, but I think it's right," Swasey detailed. "I think we're fixing this to where it's right and giving the employees a big moral boost."
The adoption of the step and grade scale will also ensure that employees receive equal treatment and have pay raises they can count on. In the past, he says raises were handed out indiscriminately, even with the wage freeze in place.
He says it will cost an estimated $125,000 to make the necessary salary adjustments, but he adds that at this point a lot of the numbers being plugged in to the proposed salary schedule "are speculation."
The county allocated $25,000 at the first of this year to use specifically for employee salary increases. But, because the step and grade scale wasn't adopted until Nov. 1, only $16,000 of that amount is expected to be used this year. The remainder will be carried over into the 1996 budget.
The new step and grade scale was formulated by taking the salaries paid to county employees and elected officials in Duchesne, Uintah, Emery and Morgan counties and averaging them out, Swasey explained. But even then, he says Duchesne County will still fall below average on the pay scale.