News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Gainesboro Board of Aldermen exploring different plans in hopes of finding funding to give employees raises.
This after several discussions about wanting to give a fair raise across the board. Mayor Lloyd Williams said in the past, the town has given out $1,000 bonuses which essentially comes out to an increase of 50 cents an hour.
“As an employee, I’d rather have my 50 cents because then I’d get it from then on, and I get that part too,” Williams said. “We’ve got a good group here. And nobody’s going to say that nobody deserves it because everyone knows they do. And we make have to look somewhere else and make cuts, but if you’ve got no employees you can’t keep the city running.”
Town Recorder Darla Pippin said she would be able to plug different options into the budget and see how the numbers come out. She said then the board can make decisions and see which salary increase plan is the fairest and works best in the budget. Alderman Travis Agee said they would be able to meet in budget committee again before passing the budget on the final reading.
Discussions of salary increases were originally specified for the police department in hopes of giving officers competitive starting salaries. Alderman Ricky Head said that he believes if the board gives raises to one department, it should look at giving everyone a raise.
“I don’t want to be childish when I say this, but it’s not exactly fair to give one department a raise and not everybody a raise,” Head said. “And I just want to clear that up because it’s been told that they don’t know how we can’t afford to give the police department a raise but we can afford to give everybody a raise. Do I technically think that we can afford to give everybody a raise? No probably not. But if we’re going to give one department a raise we’re going to need to give everybody a raise.”
