Commissioners OK $65K to study employee compensation

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County commissioners approved this morning a $65,000 agreement with Evergreen Solutions LLC of Tallahassee, Fla., for it to conduct a county employee compensation and classification study.

The study will compare Mahoning County employees’ compensation to that of their peers performing similar tasks in county governments in similar-sized Ohio counties and in private businesses, said Audrey Tillis, the county commissioners’ executive director.

The intent of the study is to give the county commissioners “more guidance” when employees seek pay raises, and to answer the question: “Where are we with the (labor) market?,” she added.

The county will have to plan “and see how we move forward as a county” to pay employees well enough to retain them and to adequately recognize them for their service, she said.

Mahoning County coroner’s investigators and entry-level juvenile detention corrections officers are among those who are underpaid for their skills, she said.

Typically, developing a compensation plan involves setting starting, mid-range and top salaries for each position, and may include annual raises based on the Consumer Price Index, which is a measure of inflation, Tillis said.

The commissioners also appointed 10 people to uncompensated three-year terms beginning July 1 on the county’s dangerous wild animal response team, which plans the handling of escapes or intentional releases of such animals.

Members include Sheriff Jerry Greene, Dog Warden Dianne Fry, Ellen Karnofel of Noah’s Lost Ark of Berlin Center, a sanctuary which owns exotic animals, and emergency management, fire and public health officials.

The team, formed in 2013, is actually a planning team, not a response team, but the state came up with the name, said Dennis O’Hara, county emergency management director.

The state requires all 88 Ohio counties to have such a team, he added.