The purpose of the external wage study, however, was to find out salary ranges for each of the positions and was not about the people in those jobs, according to Kelly Babcock of Clemans Nelson, which conducted the study.
The study’s $10,000 price tag did not cover an organizational analysis, Executive Director Caroline Bier explained at the April meeting. The consultants helped rewrite position descriptions, conducted a pay survey of other counties, and developed a compensation plan for Butler County.
But none of their findings will be taken into account after a majority vote Wednesday ditched the study, which prevents its implementation.
“I don’t understand it, it’s Greek to me,” board commissioner Ken Smith told the Journal-News after the vote. “I don’t understand it and there’s too many numbers, too many figures, stuff like that. It just don’t make sense.”
Smith nor any of the other commissioners asked questions before voting against approving the salary study. Smith, Southard and Lowell Steward voted no; commissioner Bob Perry and the newest commissioner Tom Jeffers voted to approve the study.
The wage survey showed Butler County has the third most full-time employees, the sixth most veterans, and the executive director’s salary ranked eighth of the 12 counties surveyed. None of the current employees’ salaries were outside the ranges Clemans Nelson established.
Bier was frustrated the board tossed the study.
“I’m disappointed that the wage study did not get approved because that would have given us a good basis going forward, on pay scales and job descriptions and performance-based pay raises,” she said. “We are back where we were a year ago when I started this position. We have no guidance going forward, we have nothing.”
She said when she is giving performance evaluations next November and deciding raises to recommend to the commission, she will use the information the study provided to the extent she thinks she can.
“I’m going to try to use the recommendations of the wage study to the best I can just as my own personal knowledge,” she said. “I will take what they recommended and I will try to use that on the current system that we have.”
Southard told this newspaper he voted against the plan because it was missing crucial information.
“I supported the salary study for several reasons and none of the reasons that I wanted addressed were in the study we received,” he said, adding that several employees in the past have received as much as 57 percent pay raises, but did not want to comment on what impact that has on the salary plan moving forward.
Jeffers too expressed his disappointment.
“We had the study and what they came up with were guidelines to go by, and I think that’s what you need,” he said. “Reason I voted for it is I feel like it gives the guidelines and we commissioned them to do this, they came up with the job descriptions and the guidelines and I think that’s what we need, and that’s what we paid for.”
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