Board eyes how to pay for employee raises

OSWEGO — Unbudgeted employee pay increases approved earlier this year have Labette County commissioners looking at budgets to figure out how to get departments to the end of the year in the black.

Commissioners say the raises were necessary to retain employees and make the county job openings enticing enough to prospective employees.

The size of some departments, those with only a handful of employees, complicates the issue because they have limited line items outside of payroll from which to move dollars around.

The subject came up when talking with Labette County Health Department Administrator Lisa Scott about grant renewals and new grant applications for her department.

Scott told commissioners that the employee raises will throw her budget off this year on that line item, as with other departments. 

“I don’t know exactly how bad. Everybody got raises,” Scott said.

Commission Chairman Terry Weidert told Scott that he knows the raises were not budgeted and that they handcuffed department heads. But he said the commission needed to figure out how much the raises will impact departments and how soon they will be in the red. He said he’s now working with a couple of other departments about the issue.

He wants the commission to come up with a plan to finish the year out.

“We did what we needed to do and we’ll figure out what we got to do to get there,” Weidert said.

Commissioner Cole Proehl said some budgets have surpluses available from which to draw for the payroll overages.

“I just feel like we’re going to have to jockey some of the numbers around to finish the year out as best we can,” Weidert said.

Budget talks begin in the summer, generally June and July. But the budget year starts in January.

“We got a little figuring to do,” Commissioner Vince Schibi said.

In other matters, the commission:

— Approved a grant application for the Health Department totaling $118,000 for a nurse position. This person would work with the department’s WIC nurse for a couple of months before she retires. The new hire would then become a county employee and a WIC nurse.

— Approved three grant applications for the Juvenile Justice Authority. The main block grant that funds the agency’s operations in Labette and Cherokee counties is for $402,077.55. The next grant application is $135,226.36 for two years of funding for an employee who would oversee programming in the agency. Dolechek said she had this position filled last year. This grant would be for two years instead of year to year. The third grant application would be for $108,182, which would pay for hiring a new staff member who could act as a liaison, in part, between families helped by JJA and the judicial system.

— Discussed with Dolechek the possibility of the county purchasing the building she is in from Dr. Walter Murphy. JJA has paid $800 a month for rent for its 926 square feet of office space in the building. The larger part of the building, about 1,500 square feet, is used for Murphy’s storage. 

— Discussed what they needed to do with the Labette County Judicial Center annex in the long run. The county purchased the building for $180,000.

The commission’s next meeting will be Friday. The commission will not meet on May 1. Its first meeting in May will be May 8.