Putnam Co. Budget Committee Proposes Raise For All County Employees

The Putnam County Budget Committee voted Tuesday night to give all county employees a raise.

Under the committee’s proposal, law enforcement and public safety employees would receive a $2,000 raise. All other department employees would receive an $1,800 raise.

According to committee chairman Ben Rodger, the raises would be paid for with funding out of the penny rate growth and excess sales tax revenue.

The penny rate for the 2018-2019 fiscal year is projected to generate an increase of $1.26 million from fiscal year 2017-2018.

A number of department heads attended Tuesday night’s meeting to support some type of pay increase for employees.

“We haven’t asked or received a raise for the deputies and employees at the sheriff’s office in four years,” Farris said. “We are certainly hoping to address that this year during the budget.”

Circuit Court Clerk Marica Borys said she didn’t feel like the county was competitive when it came to pay.

“When I first came nearly 16-years ago, we paid more than Tech and the banks,” Borys said. “Basically, I’ve lost almost over half of my people who have come and left to go somewhere else to make more money.”

County officials said more than 100 employees have left the county over the last 20 plus months to seek better paying jobs.

“There’s been some turnover. We’ve lost some people going to better paying jobs,” Danner said. “We have been trying to do something to promote working for Putnam County.”

Originally, the county pay scale committee had proposed a $1,000 raise for public safety employees and a $600 raise for all other department employees. In addition, they also proposed raising the pay scale from 25 to 27-years.

Last night, Commissioner Chris Savage made a motion to double the public safety raise and triple the raise for all other employees.

The full county commission must approve the raise within the upcoming fiscal year budget.