Committee recommends pay raises for Washington County employees

FAYETTEVILLE -- Washington County employees would each get a $130 per month raise if the Quorum Court approves the measure forwarded after a contentious Budget and Finance Committee meeting Tuesday evening.

The pay raise recommendation for employees came after heated debate and the defeat of two proposed amendments changing the percentage of a raise for higher paid employees. The motion passed with eight justices voting in favor and five against.

Giving each employee a $130 per month pay hike is expected to cost the county about $950,600 and would include Social Security and other benefits. The move would bring anticipated county reserve down to around $4.25 million.

Justices of the peace Shawndra Washington, Eva Madison, Andrea Jenkins, Suki Highers, Sue Madison, Willie Leming, Butch Pond amd Lisa Ecke voted for the measure. Sam Duncan, Lance Johnson, Susan Cunningham, Judith Yanez and Patrick Deakins voted against.

One failed amendment would have given employees who are already the maximum at their pay grade a one-time payment of $500 and no annual pay raise. The other would have given those employees a one-time payment of 3% of their salary and no annual raise.

Eva Madison was critical of the committee for wrangling over the amount of a raise to give employees while essentially giving a pass to other budget items.

"Let me just remind everybody that we approved $30 million in budgets without any discussion, without any consideration for our valuable employees or how hard they've worked this year. In fact, we tried to make their raises come out of that $30 million," Madison said. "So, I think it's a little disingenuous for us to say we just don't have enough money left to give people big raises when we let millions of dollars come out of this committee with no discussion, no scrutiny, no requests for justification on new positions, no requests for anything."

Madison and Pond, both said taking care of the county's employees is important.

"What some of us keep in mind here is that the employees are the most valuable asset that the county has," Pond said. "And, they might even be a little more valuable than that reserve that we have set a goal to try to make. I appreciate the employees."

The Budget and Finance Committee will take up the Road Department budget again at their next meeting. The budget failed earlier and several justices are concerned about sending it to the Quorum Court.