His new annual salary is $145,151.
Commissioner Don Dixon said when Young was hired he had no county government experience and was paid well below what the job is worth, until he proved himself.
“He has done an extremely good job and I don’t believe you could replace him for that kind of money either,” Dixon said. “It’s not fair to say he got a $20,000 raise. He got moved from probation to the permanent position. There is no doubt he’s earned his position.”
Many of the county’s unions have contracts with the county over the past year, most for lump sum $550 payments. Nearly all of them have balked at the county’s new pay-for-performance plan. Sgt. Jeff Gebhart, the union chief for the deputies and supervisors in the sheriff’s office, said Young’s raise was exorbitant.
“No one should ever receive a $20,000 raise, when they are doing the same job today that they were doing yesterday,” Gebhart said. “I would like to know if Charlie’s raise was pay-for-performance.”
Commissioner T.C. Rogers defended Young’s raise.
“If they can make agreements within their job where they save the county on an annual basis three or four times that amount (total salary), then we’ll talk to them,” Rogers said.
Commissioner Cindy Carpenter could not be reached for comment, but Dixon said previously, when other non-union, pay-for performance raises were given in January, the commissioners were gathering comparable data from other governmental entities and executives in the private sector.
Warren County Administrator Dave Gully gets paid $118,450, but that county has 152,103 fewer residents than Butler.
Dixon said while other non-union employees have received raises since Young was hired, he was willing to forgo his, given the county’s finances.
“Charlie came in and I think he understood we needed to right the ship and knew what the finances were, and his priorities were not monetary,” Dixon said. “He wants to make certain, as we do also, that we lead by example. Our priorities were to get everybody else taken care of, and then take care of top administration.”
In January, 96 people out of 193 eligible employees got raises in the one percent to four percent range. There were 46 Butler County Care Facility and 28 Children Services employees who were deemed ineligible because of budget constraints.
Children Services recently announced a $4 million budget deficit for 2014 — they have already erased about half that amount — and the Care Facility has had a difficult time balancing its budget.
Only one employee, Jason Scott, who works in the county’s IT department, got the full four percent increase, and the majority — 34 employees — got a two percent pay hike. The commissioners approved a two percent pool of performance pay money in the 2015 budget, and the managers handed out raises based on new performance evaluations.
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