By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

No pay raises can be guaranteed to Mahoning County employees as a result of a forthcoming compensation and classification study.

But nobody’s pay will be reduced because of it, the county human resources director recently said in a memorandum to elected officials and department heads.

If the new study’s results, however, mirror those of a similar study performed for the county a decade ago, which yielded double-digit pay increases for some key employees, pay raises won’t be out of the question.

Civil-service law permits pay reductions for county employees only for reasons prescribed by state law, and this study isn’t among them, said Karen U’Halie, HR director.

On June 30, the county commissioners approved a $65,000 agreement with Evergreen Solutions LLC of Tallahassee, Fla., to perform the study, which will compare county employees’ compensation with that of their peers performing similar work in other government entities, locally and regionally.

NOBODY likely OVERPAID

“I don’t think you’re going to find anybody that’s overpaid here,” said Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chairwoman of the commissioners.

“This is not really just about giving raises. ... This is to show comparatives throughout Mahoning County with all different departments and different positions,” she said.

“You can’t say that, because we’re doing the study, it just gives me justification to give you a raise. That’s not what this is about. ... We’re doing the study to have equality,” and uniformity in job descriptions, she said.

The county also wants to be competitive in employee recruitment and retention, she added. “We lose employees because they go somewhere else. We train them; they leave.”

When The Vindicator conducted an in-depth analysis two years ago of Mahoning County staff turnover in 2012 and 2013, it found the largest numbers of resignations were in the sheriff’s office, Children Services and juvenile court, which had many of the county’s lower-paid employees.

Departments showing no resignations during that two-year period were the engineer’s department and the auditor’s, treasurer’s and recorder’s offices.

The study will evaluate and classify positions, not individual employee job performance, U’Halie said.

public kick-off meeting

The memo announced a public meeting to kick off the new study will be at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in the Oakhill Renaissance Place auditorium, 345 Oak Hill Ave. Kevin Lundgren, Evergreen project manager, will attend.

County employees will be compared with their peers in governments of similar-sized counties, Rimedio-Righetti said.

The county has 1,854 employees, of whom 1,526 are full time.

The county has 826 job codes, 26 for elected officials, 347 for union jobs and the rest for nonunion jobs.

Separate codes denote full-time and part-time occupancy of the same job. Some codes haven’t been used for a long time, and the code list may be revised after the study, U’Halie said.

Evergreen is a public-sector management consulting company, which has conducted more than 250 employee-compensation and classification studies in 43 states.

“This study is being conducted to ensure the positions within the county’s classification system reflect their duties and responsibilities, and the salary range is internally equitable and competitive within our employment markets,” U’Halie wrote.

In June 2006, the commissioners hired the Archer Co. LLC of Westerville for $32,500 to perform a similar study.

Starting in August 2007, the commissioners awarded pay increases to department heads, supervisors and 911 emergency dispatchers, which they said were justified by the Archer study.

Archer compared Mahoning employees to their peers in Butler, Clark, Lake, Lorain, Stark, Summit, Trumbull and Warren counties.

U’Halie said she didn’t know which comparison counties will be used for the new study.

BIG PAY HIKES

As a result of the Archer comparison, the facilities director’s salary rose more than 31 percent, and the purchasing director’s and jail medical services coordinator’s salaries rose 21 percent, to the peer midpoint of the salary range in Archer’s study, which raised all three to $73,353 a year.

Today, the same facilities director, Peter Triveri, and the same purchasing director, James M. Fortunato, each earn $81,421 a year.

Robert L. Knight, jail medical services coordinator, retired in 2010.

The top salary of county 911 dispatchers went from $29,806 to $34,445 as a result of the Archer study.

This summer, the county dispatchers became employees of Austintown and Boardman townships, as the county prepared to close its 911 answering center in the county administration building on Boardman Street.

FOUR STUDY PHASES

The new study will be conducted in four phases, according to U’Halie’s memo, which said she hopes to have it completed within six months:

In the initial phase, employees will be able to attend orientation meetings and make comments on current compensation and classification practices, likely during October.

The second phase, expected to last about three weeks, will be the administration of an online job assessment tool that lets employees describe the types of work they do within their job titles.

“This process has been designed to give every employee the opportunity to explain the scope and complexity of their position, rather than simply relying on departmental designations and job titles,” U’Halie wrote.

In the third phase, Evergreen will survey local and regional public employers, with whom Mahoning competes for staff and “recommend a salary plan that is competitive with salaries paid for similar occupations in those markets.”

U’Halie said she did not know if the study will compare Mahoning employees’ pay with that of their peers doing the same work in the Mahoning Valley’s private sector, where possible.

In the final phase, Evergreen will provide Mahoning County “with a suggested pay plan and supporting recommendations to assist us in achieving an internally equitable and externally competitive compensation system,” U’Halie wrote.

Rimedio-Righetti urged all county elected officials and department heads to participate in the study.

“Not every department in Mahoning County is the same in what they do, but some of the positions should have some uniformity with other departments,” she said.