Council begins budget talks with debates on wage increases for county employees...

Nate adams - Reporter

Since they do not have their books, and won't until they make some preliminary decisions, the council has decided to cancel the Thursday Aug 12th meeting. This will enable the Auditor's office to compile the records requests the council has made regarding the salaries and wages of county employees.

The discussion at tonight's meeting proposed to raise all of the county employees to salary/wage levels at the median of counties surveyed for the 2020 salary report (based on 2019 data). Back-of-the-envelope calculations estimate this to cost around $305,000 plus PERF & FICA contributions. An across the board percentage increase will then be applied to all employees. The percentage increase will be decided at the next meeting on Wednesday, Aug 18th at 6pm.

TO HEAR THE DISCUSSION OF COUNTY EMPLOYEE WAGES AND SALARIES, SKIP TO 8:10 in our recording:

Additionally, councilmember Kyle Nix is quite concerned about oversight of Riverboat Funds. At his request, the council is requesting the budgets and expenditures of all township trustees offices and school districts. He is concerned that some recipients may be hoarding the funds "as they did in Elizabeth." Councilwoman Castetter expressed concerns that some trustees may have paid themselves or family members inappropriately or inappropriately charged expenses to the office.
(Reporters Note: Usually the oversight of a township trustee's office is handled by the township's Advisory Board.)

Also discussed was potentially bringing an end to the property tax debt reduction payments made to the schools. The council is concerned that they may need to raise property taxes in order to continue the payments in their current form and it may be more fair to all taxpayers if the payments were made to the taxpayers directly rather than to the schools on their behalf. Several members also expressed concern that the debt reduction payments have only encouraged the schools to accumulate more debt.

Fire districts were also discussed and the council is looking to provide them with $300,000 to be spent at the discretion of the chiefs. Several members expressed concern that the current method of payments just made a passthrough for individual volunteers to receive riverboat funds.