With concerns over losing qualified candidates to other communities, elected Cole County officials and county department heads have started discussions on employee salaries.
Last month, county Finance Officer Debbie Malzner and county Auditor Kristen Berhorst said they had checked with other communities about their efforts to deal with employee salaries.
Malzner said Jefferson City is in the process of doing a salary study, looking at things such as job descriptions and qualifications.
Berhorst said St. Charles and Franklin counties have also just completed studies that could be referenced.
At a Thursday meeting of county department heads, Berhorst said the St. Charles study cost $60,000.
She also found Boone County did a study on their own and is in the second year of a four-year plan of implementation.
"I think what I heard that was most important was that everybody had to buy into the plan if it is done internally," she said.
Presiding Commissioner Sam Bushman said he was told the state was in the process of implementing its own salary study, but there was no word on how soon that would be done.
Western District Commissioner Kris Scheperle had brought up the salary issue, asking department heads and elected officials to look at what their counterparts in other similar-size communities have done.
In October 2011, the commission approved a plan to allow elected officeholders to abandon guidelines in a 2005 salary study used to determine employee compensation.
That plan, which has been in place since 2011, calls for the commission to allocate a sum of money to officeholders for salaries. Once departments receive those allocations, the officeholder determines how the money is paid to the department employees. Commissioners have called these merit raises.
Known as the "Archer Study," the 2005 plan was approved with the idea of increasing and equalizing salaries for non-elected county employees.
"It worked for the first year, but we found we didn't have the money to keep up with it," Malzner said.
Officials at the time said the flaw in the Archer Study was it assumed the county would be able to increase and adjust the schedule each year. It didn't take into account that if there was a bad financial year, there was no way to fix it.
Current county leaders like the merit pool idea, but Scheperle added, "We have to give a cost-of-living increase just to try to keep up with other communities. When we have a study we need to make sure we focus on the base salary and then be able to move each year to keep it going."
Cole County Collector Larry Vincent said his concern was over the implementation of a salary study.
"Under the Archer plan you had to submit requests to people who were not here and had no idea the job your employee here were doing," Vincent said.
Malzner brought up how the county has tried to be fair to all employees, and in the past they've had to deal with departments and elected officials who have special funds used to give raises.
Sheriff Greg White, who proposed a plan rejected by the commission for pay increases in his department, said they also need to look at salaries in Boone and Callaway counties since they are the closest competition in the job market.
"Last year, we lost 11 part-time and six full-time employees, and we lost two full-time employees this year, all due to salary issues," White said when the 2016 budget was approved. "Countywide, we are losing good people to other places because, while they say they like working here, there are other higher-paying jobs they can go to. We need to move on this quickly because the pool of people we have to chose from is shrinking."
Malzner said she wants to get a cost figure from the city on its salary study and would send she finds out to the other department and elected officials, along with a copy of the Archer Study for their review.
Departments will be putting together their budgets in August and the commission begins the county budget process in September.