JPs OK 2022 Budget Including All Approved Raises & 4% COLA
The December 14 special Quorum Court meeting that was originally set to discuss the proposed 12% “COLA” wage hike resulted in JPs passing Faulkner County’s 2022 Budget, but not before major changes were approved.
The biggest change cuts the proposed 12% salary hike to a 4% across-the-board COLA after putting all approved raises into place, contrary to the 2022 Budget submitted to the Court by the Budget & Finance Committee.
The Quorum Court also voted to reinstate some funding for the spay and neuter program.
All the JPs were present, except JP Rose Roland (R, Dist. 5), who was out of town.
Public Comments
After justices moved quickly through approving the last meeting’s Journal, long-time Court watcher Peggy Gregory commented that she was “disappointed to see the spay and neuter program dropped” from the 2022 Budget, “particularly because it’s been so successful and it’s going to be probably close to a year before we can expect any help from our upcoming shelter.”
She added
The safety and our people are the most important in our lives and in our community. I’m very happy to see the raises in the Sheriff’s Department, much needed raises over many years to bring them more equitable….
The next part of that, though, goes to the COLA — cost of living — and we are all actually affected about the same way by the cost of living….
I have never heard of a cost of living not being the same for everyone involved…. And so to be equitable, I certainly would like you to look at that situation where people who have gotten raises to make their positions more competitive and more equitable but then are getting a reduced COLA.
Ordinance 21-45, 2022 Budget
After no other public comments, JP John Pickett (D, Dist. 11) moved to put Ordinance 21-45* “on the table for consideration” and JP Randy Higgins (R, Dist. 2) seconded.
Spay and Neuter Program
Higgins brought up the deletion of the $70,000 spay and neuter program in the 2022 Animal Control and Welfare budget, explaining the need to set aside funds during the planning phase of the proposed County animal shelter as he did during the Budget Committee deliberations. “We’re going to need every single penny that we can get for that purpose,” he added.
JP Kris Kendrick (R, Dist. 9), who sponsored the spay and neuter program, pointed out that Companions has so far sterilized 4,100 animals via the program, preventing over 12,000 unwanted animals in one year. That “clearly shows that this program has been effective,” he said.
Calling the total suspension “ill-advised,” Kendrick moved to fund $40,000 to the spay and neuter program for “roughly about half the year,” adding “we can come back and re-evaluate it.”
Close Vote to Fund $40,000
After JP Tyler Lachowsky (R, Dist. 6) seconded, JPs voted 7-5 to add $40,000 back into the 2022 Animal Welfare and Control Budget, with JPs Jerry Boyer (R, Dist. 12), Higgins, Tyler Pearson (D, Dist. 7), Pickett, and Andy Shock (R, Dist. 10) voting “no.”
Lachowsky’s “3-Point Plan”
Lachowsky said of the County’s top problems,
one of our biggest, as we’ve heard from many employees and department heads, is employee pay. Some positions are grossly underpaid in this County, while others are possibly on target with where they should be, but suffer annually from those cost of living raises….
A 12% across-the-board raise does not fix pay disparities. All it does is raise the floor from which we operate. We all want our County employees to get paid a deserving wage.
He outlined a three-point plan to address the “top problem” of employee pay discrepancies:
- Put into place all the raises approved this year, effective for 2022.
- Approve and apply a straight across-the-board 4% COLA
- Use the 8% (12% proposed minus the 4% COLA) to adjust salaries as Department heads “see fit” and come forward during 2022 to eliminate pay disparities
Lachowsky later reminded JPs that the Personnel Committee had passed the employee raises and pay resolutions “before all the 12% conversation.”
Lachowsky moved to cut the proposed 12% COLA to 4% across-the-board after first implementing all the raises approved this year, and Brown seconded the motion.
JP John Allison (R, Dist. 3) quickly agreed to support the changes, saying
I think this Court has shown its willingness to raise employee pay when it’s demonstrated by the elected officials that such raises are required to get the employees back up to where they can be in line with other Class 6 counties.
Adding 12% Directly to Budget “Bypasses” Raise Process
Allison said that adding the 12% salary hike directly into the proposed 2022 Budget “bypassed the …Resolution that outlined a process for raises,” adding that “elected officials who jumped through hoops … are unfairly just kind of swept along in this.”
Higgins instructed Allison:
I appreciate the elected officials that went through the effort, you know, to get their raises for their people. But I probably need to remind you that when they’re doing that they’re amending the budget.
So it’s actually the budget that says that overall, and then they come through here. The process that Justice Lachowsky is talking about, I actually agree with that.
But the actual process is the budget. And then when they come through Personnel and things, they’re amending the Budget. So am I making myself clear to you that there’s not anything abnormal that was done?
Can Sheriff’s Budget Be Adjusted?
Higgins was concerned that the Sheriff’s budget could make “the appropriate adjustments” if the 12% were removed or adjusted. Then he asked Sheriff Tim Ryals how his Department budget had calculated the proposed raises for jailers, detention officers, and others plus the proposed 12% pay hike.
County Attorney Phil Murphy, directing his remarks to Fiscal Officer Angie Wooley, said,
I think it was the greater of the two. So if the raise request was an 18% request, then it was an 18% raise. If it was a 2% raise, then it was a 12% raise.
So it was the greater of the two, not just for the Sheriff’s budget but I think that would also be true for the Assessor’s budget as well.
Wooley clarified that the Department had submitted an “adjusted pay request” to the Personnel Committee, but they still have “our original package of what we turned in in October,” adding that adjusting for Lachowsky’s motion is “just a matter of adjusting the spreadsheet.”
Lachowsky commented
We want to see every department come before us and put the positions in front of us that need to be adjusted, you know. Because we want our employees to be paid what they deserve to be paid. We actually have an opportunity to do that….
I just don’t feel like 12% solves the problem. I want to do the deeper work to try to actually solve the problem that we’re facing.
Allison agreed that the elected officials “weren’t really bringing these [salary requests] up maybe all the way to where they wanted them. They were bringing them up to where they thought they could get, and it was just really at the bottom edge of the range they’d really like to see them. I think that’s another reason we need raises before the COLA.”
Pearson Pushes 12%
Pearson commented,
In my experience on the Court we have usually done raise requests about the same time, and then sometimes been able to debate a cost-of-living adjustment…. It’s been standard practice to do either the cost-of-living adjustment or the raise request, whichever was the greater two of the amounts.
It breaks the mold a little bit to … get your raise request plus a cost-of-living adjustment. That, to me, also seems to apply an unequal cost of living adjustment across the board.
One final point … there’s a lot of conversation and confusion, it seems, that the cost of living adjustment is somehow being put in place to give people raises or to reduce pay disparities….
My understanding is a 12% cost-of-living adjustment was proposed because there were several years where we didn’t have a cost-of-living adjustment — and that totaled up to I think 8.9% — and then an additional 3.1% was added to anticipate what this year’s rises and expenses will take.
So I don’t know where 4% comes from, if that’s just an arbitrary number, if that’s grounded in some type of, you know, data or information or what….
I have a hard time saying and agreeing to the thought that County employees today should be paid less than they were 10 years ago, for any employee. It doesn’t matter if their department heads have put in raise requests.
I think it was just mentioned that many departments have not come before the Court, and the ones that did asked for lower amounts because that’s all they thought they could get. Because in years past, we haven’t had the money to give big raises; we haven’t had the political will to give big raises…
I would urge you to change your 4% to 8.9% because that will cover this year, and it will cover all the years past, to bring all employees back to basically their purchasing power 10 years ago….
Allison: Salaries UP by 20% Since 2014
Allison pointed out
I pulled up the County Road Department … in 2014 there was a $1.591 million line item for salaries in the County Road Department. In 2020 that was $1.942. That’s a significant increase overall.
I totaled all of the salaries in 2014 and all the salaries in the 2020 budget, and it increased by 20%. So that incorporates added positions but it also incorporates raises along the way in a lot of departments.
Mr. Pickett did include a line in his documentation in support of 12% that some positions had had raises, but we could not necessarily delineate those from everybody.
So to say that every County employee that we’re talking about here has a decline in purchasing power, I believe isn’t accurate because we can’t really say which employees … without probably a forensic accounting because it’s going to take so much time to delve into it….
This County’s budget for salaries — that salary line item in these departments — has increased by over 20% since 2014.
Health Insurance Costs Up 8% Annually?
When Lachowsky asked about health care costs going up by 8%, County Administrator Tom Anderson commented, “We’ve had two good years in a row, and there’s no change… I think Scott (Sanson) may have said that, I’m not sure.”
Allison also recalled Sanson saying at the November 30 Budget & Finance Committee that “the amount we’re paying for health coverage has increased by 8% a year since 2015.”
Lachowsky explained that 4% was in line with “some of the other increases throughout other counties in the state,” and added
I want see us put back more money so that we can not only adjust these positions that need to be adjusted but to where we possibly have money in the bank to give another COLA next year and the year after that and the year after that. Instead let’s take this large influx increase in revenue that we’ve seen and let’s use it to stabilize pay for our County employees…
Higgins Talks Compromise
Higgins, complimenting Lachowsky’s three-point plan, commented that
there’s some concern about purchasing power. And I’m sensitive to the fact that I was here when we went five years and offered no raises, and I think the first raise we offered after that was 1%.
I’d like to put on the table 5.9% … that’s what the Social Security increase is for this year…. I think 5.9% is more in line with what others are proposing.
Pay Raise for Elected Officials
When Kendrick agreed with Lachowsky’s proposal, he mentioned the need to
bring these pay disparities up, especially I know, the jailers … and some in the sheriff’s office….
Another one we need to keep in mind … is looking at the raises for our elected officials. We bumped up the chief deputies. Now some of the chief deputies are getting closer to the elected officials….
Brown, supporting the motion, said “I went through, page-by-page, the information the Sheriff’s office presented… Even the raises they requested were lower than the average for our comparative counties….”
He suggested that pay in the proposed 2022 Budget be adjusted further for bailiffs, detention officers, and entry-level deputies “to bring them up to the average as shown in the materials presented by the Sheriff’s office” but Lachowsky declined to amend his earlier motion.
“Message” to Sheriff’s Office
Higgins, pointed to “a sense of urgency with the Sheriff’s office” because they are “down 20 jailers” by Friday and said
I realize it’s a little outside of your motion but if we’re going to make this motion and get through the budget process at the same time, we need to extend some messages to the Sheriff’s office that we are ready to help them…
Pickett Explains
After Kendrick, Shock, and Allison voiced support for Lachowsky’s changes. Moss did as well, although he also said he “didn’t like” the 4% figure.”
Then Pickett — who advocated for the 12% as Chair of the Budget & Finance Committee running the 2022 Budget review process — said
Let me try to disentangle what we’re talking about. There are two things going on at the same time. One is a COLA and one is a salary adjustment resulting from the salary survey.
The COLA adjustment has two parts. Part one is the 8% that our employees have lost in purchasing power over 10 years. The 4% is what they’re going to be losing next year….
He added that the Sheriff’s office raise requests that were approved cover “about half the employees in the County … so there’s another half of the employees that are going to get no salary adjustment.”
Later he said Lachowsky’s proposal would produce “a comprehensive salary survey for the other half of our employees that we can address later in the spring.”
“Unresponsible” to Not Address Sheriff’s Salaries
JPs revisited their earlier points over the next several minutes after Lachowsky repeated his motion, then Shock pointed out that 18 open detention officer positions in the Sheriff’s Department amounts to a 23% reduction in manpower.
When Baker said the Road Shop has “about seven” open positions, Shock pointed out
While we need those employees and we appreciate those employees, if they’re down 20 it’s not a lot for this situation. It really is a big inconvenience, for sure, but it’s not a life-or-death situation. We’re talking about being 18 positions down [in the Sheriff’s Department], down 20% of your manpower, so any argument to not help these guys out with salaries is unresponsible…
In the big scheme of things, public safety is priority number one.
Boyer Supports 5.9%
Boyer, saying “I do agree with Justice Lachowsky on the premise of the three points,” said he disagreed with the 4% and added “I would be more inclined to agree with Justice Higgins. 5.9% or even more if we can afford it.”
He said
Are we going to be hoarding money to cut our cost of living? I think we’re going to come back with a whole bucket full of money next year, for 2023. That’s not the purpose of the Quorum Court and the appropriations. We’re supposed to fund, appropriate the funds for the department heads as they tell us…
Kendrick responded that the COPS grant and jail projects are issues
we’re facing that we might not need to hoard money for, but put some back … there are some immediate expenses that are coming up and some long-term that we have to try to meet without raising taxes.
Lachowsky concluded
It’s sticky and it’s not the best it could be … We’ve got to draw the line somewhere. And then next year we’re going to adjust the salaries for those that need to be adjusted. And then, hopefully, there’s money in the budget still for another regular raise based off things that are going on in our economy at the time….
We’re trying to pass a conservative budget to try to not only take care of our pay issues but to take care of a lot of the other issues that we still have to deal with within the County that we haven’t had money to deal with in the past.
After Murphy and Baker repeated the motion and its details, JPs voted 9-3 to make the changes to the 2022 Budget per Lachowsky’s proposal. Boyer, Pickett, and Pearson voted “no.”
ARP Funds for Sheriff’s Budget
Moving on to discuss the newly amended 2022 Budget itself, Kendrick questioned the allocation of $164,000 from the American Rescue Plan to pay for the mental health add-on part of the third-party jail medical contract.
He warned, “If we’re not careful, we’re going to get a large amount of expenses coming out of that temporary fed money. That’s funny fake money. And then when it comes time, we’re not going to be able to absorb that in our standard budgets.”
While Kendrick said it is a “bad budget practice” to use “one-time money” for “regular, re-occuring budget expenses,” Higgins said, “While we have ARP money available to support this we can, and when it comes to a point where we may have to discuss bringing it out of County General, we can have that discussion.”
Wooley explained that the Sheriff’s Department chose that funding source because ARP allows that expense, adding
We do want to … get the funding from American Rescue Plan because it is designed for that purpose … and hopefully when the American emergency plan ceases to exist we will have the funding available, whether it be in Criminal Justice or, you know, one of our other special revenue funds.
Or, even if County General can progress in their revenue as much as we have in the last couple of years and the sales tax as well, I anticipate and hope that it will keep doing so.
Health Contract Cost $629,000 for 2022
Lachowsky asked Wooley about “the other portion of Turn-Key health contract” and Wooley said she “thought it was $629,000” to be paid from three sources: the Criminal Justice sales tax fund, the jail fines/County detention fund, and County General.
Allison verified that the mental health portion could be dropped in the future without increasing the cost of the regular health care contract.
After Higgins again discussed the $164,000 contract source and Allison asked about the budget for the election coordinator position, Murphy confirmed that nine “yes” votes from JPs would “actually pass this budget tonight.”
Take Time to Review?
Kendrick commented that he’d like to “see the amended numbers and changes in the Budget and have time to review it personally before we vote on it … I don’t see what the rush to vote on it tonight is.” However, Shock called for the vote.
After Murphy said, “Even though it’s been called, it still has to be seconded and approved,” JPs discussed a few more moments until Boyer seconded.
The Court voted 10-2 via roll call, with Kendrick voting “present” and Strain voting “no,” and the meeting was adjourned.
Kendrick later said,
I stated in the meeting that I wanted to review all of the changes we had made during the meeting and preferred to see those final numbers before the vote, which is why I voted present. Overall, I was pleased with the critical raises and 4% COLA that we worked to incorporate into this budget.
*The original Ordinance 21-45 document distributed with the 12/14/21 agenda has been removed from the County website.
Videos edited from original video on Faulkner County’s YouTube channel.)
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