Committee members say ‘no’ to commissioner raise

Finance and personnel committee leaves door open for commissioner to bring request back in June

Taylor County Highway Commissioner won’t get an additional raise due to job reclassification this year, at least not right now.

In a move that sends a message to other county staff as well as taxpayers, members of the Taylor County Finance and Personnel committee on Dec. 22 voted 4-3 against giving highway commissioner Ben Stanfley an approximately $1 an hour raise due to reclassification of his job duties.

In an unusual move when discussing wages and personnel issues, committee members opted to hold the discussion on the request in open session. The committee agenda had been posted to consider going into closed session to discuss employee performance evaluation.

Committee member Scott Mildbrand said he had concerns about the requested pay increase, but that had nothing to do with Stanfley’s job performance. “Ben is doing a fine job,” Mildbrand said.

“We are not talking about performance, that is not an issue here,” said committee chairman Chuck Zenner allowing the discussion to continue in open session.

Mildbrand said he opposed increasing the highway commissioner’s wage at this time for two reasons. He said the first is that a year ago, the county implemented an overall wage increase based on a wage study done that showed the county was lagging. He said he did not think it was fair at this point to pull employees out individually and wanted it to be driven more by the human resources department. “I don’t believe it is fair to the other employees,” he said.

The other area of concern he said was that the request was brought up eight days after the county’s budget hearing where there had been a compromise reached to give employees a 4% wage increase in addition to the step raise. “We never said we would do any individual classifications reviews,” Mildbrand said, He said that in approving the budget board members made that agreement with the taxpayers. He said he did not think it was fair to the county board or fair to other employees to consider an additional wage increase for the highway commissioner at this time.

Zenner echoed some of the concerns expressed by Mildbrand, while emphasizing that he believes Stanfley has done a great job. He also noted that the board had changed the health insurance policy to be more favorable to employees.

“I have to echo Scott’s comments, I have a problem with it,” Zenner said.

“So when do we stop?” asked committee member Rollie Thums. He said that once the county starts approving raises individually they can’t stop because it is hard to stop it. He said he felt it should have come up at budget time.

Stanfley responded that the timing was due to it being his reelection by the board for the commissioner position and it being during the employee review that was done. “There was no other time to bring it up,” Stanfley said.

He noted the job description for the position was from 2001 and needed to be updated to reflect what his responsibility and duties are currently versus what they were when the job descriptions had originally been developed.

Committee member Lester Lewis agreed with Stanfley that during his employee review was the appropriate time to bring up the position wage review. “There is no reason on harping on him about it,” Lewis said. “We can’t blame the employees because we don’t do updates on our job descriptions,” Lewis said, noting they should be doing them more than once every 20 years.

Lewis said the money was what is important. The highway commissioner is currently at a “Q” classification in the county’s wage matrix earning $40.63 per hour. On January 1, he will receive a 4% raise like all other county employees, and go up to $42.26 per hour. Stanfley will also hit his anniversary date on February 18 and go up a step on the pay scale to $43.13 per hour.

The recommendation from Carlson Dettmann Consulting, taking into account the new job description and requirements approved by the committee was to raise the rating to a “R” classification which would have a base wage of $44.09 per hour. Based on past practice, reclassification resets the anniversary date for step increases.

Lewis said the overall impact would be at most $2,500 over what the commissioner is currently paid.

“I don’t have a problem moving it up one grade,” he said, noting that when it came to how other county employees might react he didn’t care about them in making this decision.

He said he did not see a problem with having other come and make requests. “That is part of what our job is supposed to be,” he said.

As far as seeming to reverse from previous action, Lewis noted the board could change its mind at any time. “If I made a decision to go down a dead end road, pretty soon I am going to make a decision to turn around and go back,” Lewis said.

Committee member Jim Gebauer also spoke in support of moving the highway commissioner position to the “R” classification, noting the county board voted to keep him in the position and that the classification study showed that was what the position was entitled to.

Committee member Ray Soper focused on the employee handbook language which limits revaluation requests to take place between June 1 and June 30 of each year. He also noted that under the handbook, employees can request reviews at any time.

“I think it is fairly clear to me that the employee handbooks says come back in June and we will look at it,” Soper said.

Joining Soper in voting against the increase were Mildbrand, Zenner and Thums with Gebauer, Catherine Lemke and Lewis in favor of the increase.

In related action, committee members approved the new job description which states a bachelors degree is preferred with the option of nine years of job experience. Stanfley noted that his previous position in the land conservation department has a job rating below the highway commissioner yet requires a bachelors degree.