(Photo Source: Unsplash).
Cortland County’s proposals to revamp the salary structure for county employees could cost up to $586,346, according to county administrator Rob Corpora.
Corpora, alongside county personnel officer Laurie Leonard, presented the proposals to increase pay for management, management confidential, and civil service employees at a recent county legislature meeting. If the proposals are implemented on June 30, which is halfway through the year, the price would be $293,173 for the remainder of 2022.
“There is a very finite number of funding sources the county has: property taxes, sales tax, and state and federal funding. Those are 99.9 percent of what we have to work with,” Corpora said. “We only have control over one of them, and that is one I do not want to touch. I do not want to increase property taxes.”
The county would use a combination of revenue, state and federal funding, contingency account funding, and incoming restructuring of healthcare plans to shore up some of the costs of employee raises, Corpora said.
Below is the cost breakdown for incoming years:
(Graphic Source: Cortland County Administrator's Office).
Management and management confidential employees are currently on a grade system, where they receive annual salary increments of 2 percent. The county offers six steps and 11 grades for management employees, according to a report commissioned by the county to the Burke Group, a Rochester-based human resources consulting firm. Management employees climb a grade after every 10 years, and for management confidential employees, there are only five grades. There is a 4 percent increase between each grade from one to four, and an 8.2 percent increase between grades four and five.
The Burke Group’s proposal is to move the number of salary grades to 12, adding two grades at the top and removing the lowest grade equivalents of the current system. Under this proposal there would be four steps within each grade.
Based on peer group and market data, the Burke Group’s proposal for management employees would also divide tenure into four different quartiles or pay-ranges, with the first quartile being the position’s starting rate. After three years of service, or for applicants who have comparable experience in a similar role, that rate would move to the second quartile. The third quartile is a pay-range for employees with seven-to-10 years of experience in a particular role with the county or a comparable job elsewhere. The fourth quartile is designated for employees who have worked at the county in a particular position, or in a similar role elsewhere (for 11 years or longer).
“The advantages of this proposal are that it allows more flexibility to hire at appropriate steps,” Leonard said. “Employees are at market rate after four years of employment, there is a higher starting salary to start recruitment, and the last step is after 10 years to attempt to retain our employees.”
For civil service employees, there is a 29-grade system. According to the Burke Group proposal, grade one and two positions do not pay enough to attract workers. The county recommendation is to move two grade positions to the grade three payscale.
“We also plan to work with the Civil Service Employees Association (union) going forward in contract negotiations,” Leonard said. She noted that the current labor contract ends at the end of 2023. “The advantages of this proposal are making hard-to-fill positions more competitive, aligning the grade plan more appropriately, and retaining employees in high turnover positions.”
These proposals to raise employees salaries and wages are part of the county’s continued plan to address employment.
In November, the county passed a resolution to approve an across-the-board pay increase of 4 percent for civil service employees and a 2 percent raise for management and management confidential employees.
Corpora highlighted the role of employees at the county level.
“We spend a lot of money with employees all the time. They are our most valuable asset,” Corpora said. “Employees are the ones that get everything done, and they are the ones that make or break the services provided to all constituents.”
Addressing salaries has become a priority for companies and public entities across the country.
Low wages may be a decisive factor in what national media has dubbed the “great resignation.” This can be described as a collective, though mostly decentralized, class consciousness trend that has led to several hundreds of workers to leave their jobs for a variety of reasons. Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that a record 4.5 million workers resigned in November.
At the presentation, Leonard noted there were 11.3 million job vacancies across the country by the end of January, per a stat from the Society for Human Resources Management. Workers, according to Leonard’s presentation, are leaving because of low wages and subpar benefits, unstable work-life balance, and a lack of recognition from employers.
“Last year, 89 county jobs were lost due to resignation or retirement and the number of people taking civil service exams has been dropping for years,” Leonard said.
Leonard noted the number of vacant positions at the county level has generally been trending up since 2016, when there were 64 vacancies. In total, countywide vacancies are up 39 percent from 2016 to last year, Laurie said.
The three most popular civil service exams for county employment – police officer exam, caseworker exam, and keyboard specialist exam – have all seen significant declines, Laurie said. From 2018 to 2021, there has been a slide of 70 percent in the average number of civil service exams for police officers, a 54 percent decline in the average number of caseworker exams, and a 55 percent decline in the average number of civil service exams for keyboard specialists.
Vacant positions also take a long time to attract qualified candidates. The average number of days a position stays vacant has also increased 41 percent from 2018 to last year, Laurie said.
As noted by the Burke Group’s assessment, most county positions pay 10-20 percent below market rate. That number jumps to 20-40 percent below market rate for civil service employees, Laurie noted.
Laurie showed an example of county positions such as cleaner, building maintenance worker, senior account clerk, senior cleaner, secretary, and senior clerk, and compared the rates the county offers to those offered by SUNY Cortland and Tompkins Cortland Community College.
That example can be found below:
(Graphic Source: Cortland County Administrator's Office).
Rearranging the salary structure for county highway employees is perhaps the most indicative example of a policy that has yielded results in addressing vacant positions. In September 2021, a resolution was passed to reallocate 17 job titles in the county highway department to help with a drastic hiring issue, Laurie said. This reallocation, she added, was substantiated by the Burke Group findings.
“This reallocation produced the desired effect,” she said. “Prior to reallocation the department had six vacancies with 11 job applications. After the relocation, the department ended up with three vacancies after 23 applications were received.”
