Thumbnail photo by Paul Critz Del Norte County supervisors took a first step toward implementing a salary schedule they say will make wages more competitive, starting on Tuesday with their unrepresented county employees. County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez said he hopes to bring revised salary schedules and wage adjustments for the county’s represented bargaining groups before the Board on Dec. 9. “We’re trying to get everybody implemented at the same time, which will be the 19th of December,” Lopez told Redwood Voice Community News. “The pay period begins the 19th of December and we want everybody on the same ship when this whole thing gets established.” The county’s unrepresented employees include appointed department heads, assistant department heads, deputy directors, confidential employees who handle personnel matters as well as the undersheriff. Elected officials such as the sheriff, the district attorney, the county clerk-recorder, the county assessor, the auditor-controller and the treasurer/tax collector are also unrepresented county employees. Four supervisors got their first look at revised salary schedules they had asked their administrative team to compile using data consultants with Gallagher collected during a compensation and structural analysis. In September Gallagher consultants stated that the county’s overall base salary was 10% below the market median while its overall compensation package was 2.1% above the market median. But because Gallagher used inconsistent data, comparing maximum salaries with maximum salaries instead of base-level pay, which is what the Board requested, implementing their recommendations would have resulted in inverse relationships between supervisors and those working below them, according to Lopez. On Tuesday, Lopez said that while Gallagher gave the administrative team accurate market data, they weren’t implementing it correctly for the county structure. “What happened was it was dumped on our administrative team to put the pieces together,” he said. “A lot of us have been here 20-years plus so we know the structure inside and out from a personnel standpoint. So we put those pieces together based on the independent data that Gallagher collected from these comparable counties and put the structure together to avoid compaction and to avoid inverse relationships.” The revised salary schedules are a departure from the former A,B,C, step system the county had formerly used, Lopez said. Instead of using two-digit numbers for ranges, the new system relies on a three-digit range as well. Implementing the new schedules for the county’s unrepresented employees is the easiest since there is no bargaining involved, he added. Before the administrative team brought the revised salary schedule for the unrepresented employees to the Board, they had to make sure it was financially feasible, according to District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey. She said that apart from losing one or two vacant positions, the county was able to make those salary schedules work without any significant losses. Starkey also noted that the new salary schedules are in line with the county’s strategic plan, which focuses on retaining employees. “For decades these comp analyses have been done and the Board leaves them sitting on a shelf,” she said, adding there were some positions that were paid above market value and others that were under. Starkey and her colleagues had asked Gallagher to compare base salaries to make things fair. However, on Sept. 9, Gallagher representatives said they used maximum salaries for compensation rather than entry-level, which Starkey, at the time, argued was inconsistent. On Tuesday, Starkey said it created more work for the county’s administrative team to work out the internal relationships using Gallagher’s data. “Neal and the team had to go through and analyze each position,” Starkey said. “It got very complicated. Mid-management has this set of rules and SEIU has this set of rules and SEA (Sheriffs Employees Association) is split off from everybody and they have this set of rules. Eventually (we can) streamline our pay schedule so it’s clear and easy to follow.” Before Starkey and her colleagues tackled the new salary schedules at Tuesday’s meeting, Jessica King, Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services administrative operations manager and lead negotiator for the mid management group, thanked Lopez and Auditor-Controller Clint Schaad. “I know the delays and the ultimate out come were not what any of us have expected,” she said of the Gallagher report, “so having to step in and correct the situation required a significant amount of work and time.” King said she and the mid-management group had combed through memorandums of understanding for each of the seven counties Gallagher compared Del Norte’s salaries to and have come up with a few proposals. “Adopting the proposals will further reinforce the equity the Board is working to implement across all bargaining units,” she said. “We are simply asking for the standard equitable benefits consistent with our comparable counties’ exempt staff.” District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short was absent.