WHO WANTS TO BE IT?
Answer: Everybody. Putting the Green in Greenberg
Mono County completed a compensation study for the salaries of its entire staff.
At her final Board of Supervisors meeting on Wednesday, April 18, County Administrative Officer (CAO) Leslie Chapman along with Human Resources (HR) Director Dave Butters presented the study’s findings and made recommendations to the board.
They recommended $226,984 in salary increases across the staff, which is a 4.6% increase in at-will contract expenditures. Total at-will expenditures are $4,934,434,78. (At-will employees are non-elected.) The county included funds for a 5% increase in its 2019-2020 budget The salary increases came in 0.4% under budget. Supervisors unanimously approved the recommendation with a 4-0 (Supervisor Jennifer Halferty was absent.)
Initially, the county hired a consultant to do the study. It ditched the consultant
The study compared county salaries to those of fifteen counties: Amador, Calaveras, Colusa, Glenn, Inyo, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Nevada, Plumas, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, and Tuolumne. These counties were considered similar because of population of county, budget size, county staff size, and five year average wages.
They began with base pay and added longevity, deferred compensation, insurance, social security, county contributions to PERS.
The county calculated that Mono County’s cost of living merited an 11.3% increase from the median salary of the comparable counties. The county modified the equation used by Sperling Best Places’s Cost of Living calculator by replacing listed home values with actual home sale prices from the National Association of Realtors. The median home value in Mono County is $404,140, $64,430 more than the second most expensive county, Trinity, of the comparables.
The county only used this data for positions that it felt were good comparisons to other counties, meaning the counties with the same positions, like CAO or Finance Director. In addition to the data, the county based new salaries on internal equity, the ‘is it fair?’ test compared to what other county employees are paid.
The report stated, “…it must be stressed that finding the median salary for benchmark positions and adding a cost of living factor did not, in most cases, provide us with a salary we could recommend to the Board.”
The $226,984 was doled out across seventeen positions. Benefits are not included in any of these salaries.
The CAO position got a $6,600 boost.
The HR Director got a $11,000 increase.
The Risk Manager got $6,320 more.
The County Counsel’s salary increased $2,700.
The Public Works Director salary increased $17,600.
EMS chief, $9,840.
The Public Works Road Superintendent was the only salary that decreased. It went down $4,432.
The Community Development Director salary increased $8,000.
The Community Development Department building official salary increased $6,000.
Probation chief, $13,064.
Behavioral Health and Social Services directors, $13,664.
Public Health director, $13,556.
Treasure/Tax collector increased $6,364.
The largest increase by percentage was for the Information Technology (IT) Director position, currently occupied by Nate Greenberg. His salary increased from $114,180 to $150,000, a $35,820 or 31.4% increase. According to the study, the median salary for IT directors in the comparable counties was $121,780. The salary incorporating cost of living was $135,541.
According to Dave Butters, the additional $14,459 above the cost of living affected salary accounts for additional responsibilities and projects outside the scope of the IT Director position. The three major responsibilities and jobs have been Greenberg’s work in planning to overhaul the county’s radio network, his leadership role in county strategic planning and work on broadband planning and economic development.
Greenberg gets $11,250 per month for IT duties and $1,250 for the other stuff.
An attachment to Greenberg’s contract said that Greenberg is heading the county’s seemingly Sisyphean strategic planning effort.
It read, “Facilitate and take responsibility for the Countywide Strategic Planning effort by coordinating with Department Heads, the County Administrative Officer, and Board of Supervisors. Assist with the development and implementation of a Performance Measurement system which provides transparency and clear analysis of progress made in Strategic Focus Areas.”
Not all positions received the cost of living affected salary. For example, the county clerk/recorder/registrar salary with cost of living factored in was $116,326. The board approved a change to $116,000.
Economic Development Director, $11,528. The Economic Development Department assistant director was the one of four non-department heads positions to receive an increase in pay. That position’s salary increased by $17,473 or 24.8%.
CAO Chapman said it was up to department heads to decide what the positions under them made. Consider it a dry winter.
All salaries for positions in the District Attorney’s office under the DA remained the same. According to Transparent California, in 2017, DA Tim Kendall’s salary was $157,940.
