Floyd County supervisors continue budget work, discussing wide range in county employee pay increase requests

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County supervisors dived back into fiscal year 2025-26 budget work at their regular meeting this week, spending several hours discussing potential wage and salary increases for various employees and also looking at shifting expenditures between funds to avoid increasing tax rates.

The supervisors went through the approximately 100 county employees line by line.

The starting point for pay increases was the 2.75% hike based on the agreement negotiated in the Secondary Roads Department’s union contract.

But almost half of the employees have pay increases that could be somewhat or significantly greater than that for a variety of reasons, including requests by many department heads to raise certain employee pay increases to a higher level to make them comparable to other pay given to other county employees.

For example, Supervisor Gloria Carr pointed out, last year the supervisors in office at that time agreed to increase dispatchers’ pay to about $27 per hour after a request by the dispatch administrator, John Gohr, saying he needed to be able to compete with dispatcher pay in other counties to attract and keep employees in those positions.

In the new budget, Sheriff Jeff Crooks has requested that jailers’ pay be increased from their current $22 an hour to $27.

“This is no surprise this is coming because of the huge increase you gave to the dispatchers,” said Carr, who had been county auditor for 20 years before being elected in November to become a supervisor at the beginning of this year.

She wondered if a jailer’s job was equivalent to a dispatcher’s, and said they needed information on jailer pay in other counties to compare.

In many areas, Carr cited a lack of information regarding what salary requests were being based on.

For example, the Floyd County Compensation Board in December had recommended that the county auditor, recorder, treasurer and supervisors be given 4.66% increases in the new fiscal year that begins July 1, and 9.33% for the county sheriff and county attorney.

But Carr said she said they hadn’t been given the “comparables” that Compensation Board members were supposed to use to come up with their recommendations according to Iowa Code.

Compensation board members, who are appointed by the elected officials to represent them, are supposed to compare local elected officials’ salaries to salaries in other counties in and out of Iowa, to comparable city and federal pay, and to private businesses.

Particularly for the recommendation to increase the sheriff’s pay by 9.33%, Carr said she had not seen evidence that the Compensation Board followed the requirements of the Iowa “Back the Blue” law, which requires that county sheriff pay be comparable to the pay of police chiefs for cities with similar population size to the county, and to state and federal law enforcement officials with similar responsibilities.

It could be that the 9.33% isn’t enough, she said, but they need the comparables to decide.

Some pay increases have impacts that extend beyond the person or persons getting the increase.

For example, county sheriff’s deputies are paid a percentage – usually 75% or 80% – of the county sheriff’s salary. Give the sheriff a 9.33% increase and the deputies get that increase, too, in addition to being eligible for longevity pay.

Although few other elected officials have deputies anymore that are paid a salary based on a percentage of the elected official’s salary, some offices have clerks that are paid an hourly wage designed to approximate that percentage, Carr said.

The difference, said Carr, is that when she used to have deputies as county auditor before previous boards of supervisors started eliminating office deputy positions, their pay was a salary – paid regardless of hours worked.

If clerks are paid an hourly wage that approximates the percentage that deputies used to make, they are still eligible for overtime pay, Carr said.

The supervisors agreed to contact various department heads for more information about pay requests that were higher than 2.75%, and to get more information on comparable salaries so they can start making decisions on pay rates and see how they effect the overall county budget.

The latest budget numbers put together by Carr and County Auditor Morrigan Miller show no tax levy rate increase would be needed in the county general fund to meet estimated expenses and keep the end-of-the-fiscal-year carryover balance above the county’s 25% goal.

The 25% carryover goal is used so the county has funds to operate in the first quarter of the new fiscal year that begins July 1, before new property tax revenues start coming in.

The problem in the current figures is in the general supplemental fund, where a tax rate increase would be needed to keep the carryover fund at or above 25%.

The supervisors spent some time Tuesday morning and early afternoon discussing items that could be shifted from the general supplemental to the general fund, but made no decisions yet.

The county budget will need to be finalized in the next couple of weeks in time to hold public hearings, approve the final budget and send it in to the state.