Board to eye budget, salaries
By Steve Herring
Published in News on May 18, 2015 1:46 PM
Wayne County commissioners will get their first look Tuesday at the second part of a new employee classification and pay plan.
On May 5, the board by a 6-1 vote adopted a merit-based pay plan based on employee evaluations. On Tuesday, commissioners will consider adoption of the pay scale for each county job.
The plan does not include elected officials and contracted positions including the county manager, assistant county manager and county attorney, who are appointed by the board; the Wayne County Development Alliance president, who is appointed by the Alliance board with concurrence of the county manager; and the sheriff and register of deeds, who are elected.
Tuesday's proposal also includes a provision that no changes can be made to the plan without an amendment being approved by commissioners.
"This assures that you have complete control over any adjustments to the plan," County Manager George Wood wrote in a memo to commissioners.
The meeting will get under way with an 8 a.m. agenda briefing followed by the formal session at 9 a.m. in the commissioners' meeting room on the fourth floor of the county courthouse annex.
The plan adopted earlier this month replaced a 19-step per grade plan with three steps -- beginning, middle and ending steps. The salaries associated with those three steps will be discussed Tuesday.
As adopted, the county manager would recommend a percentage of salaries and benefits to go into a pool for each department on an annual basis.
For example, if a 1.5 percent pool is recommended, each department head would get that amount of money to cover 1.5 percent of wages and benefits for his or her department.
The exception would be for the department heads' wages, which would go into a pool for the county manager and assistant county manager to determine.
Each year a rule would be determined for the maximum percentage raise any one employee could receive. In the example above, if the pool is 1.5 percent, the maximum any one employee could receive might be set at 1.75 percent.
However, the department head must stay within the 1.5 percent pool of money for raises.
Wood has said the new plan would provide the flexibility to give pay increases because it is merit-based and not tied to a specific annual amount like the old plan.
It has been four years since county employees have had a pay increase because of the struggling economy and a pay plan that was set up to provide increases of 2.5 percent across-the-board, Wood said.
Other items on Tuesday's agenda include:
* Military Appreciation Month proclamation.
* Emergency Medical Services presentation and motion to adopt Emergency Medical Services Week proclamation.
* Summer Food Service Program in Wayne County presentation by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction School Nutrition Services.
* Motion to approve final subdivision plat for Glenn Laurel Subdivision, Section 9.
* Motion to approve Blue Cross Blue Shield rates for fiscal year 2015-16.
* Presentation and possible vote on website upgrade for E-Government.
* Motion to approve budget amendments.
* Motion on recommendation on new records software for the Department of Social Services.
* Motion to convey former Mount Olive High School property accepted from the Wayne County Board of Education to the University of Mount Olive.
* Motion to approve Mount Olive Industrial Park declaration of covenants, conditions and restrictions.
Items on the consent agenda include: Audit contract with Nunn, Brashear & Uzzell, P.A. for fiscal year 2014-15; Wayne County ABC Board travel policy; establishment of a public hearing on June 16 at 9:15 a.m. on a request from Kenneth and Jenia Fields to rezone 872 N.C. 111 South, Goldsboro; Berkeley Mall July 4 fireworks resolution; and budget amendments.
Public comments portion of the meeting will start at 10 a.m. People will have four minutes to speak on their topic of choice.