Salary board approves office manager position at sheriff’s department

BROOKVILLE — The Jefferson County Salary Board approved a motion to establish the position of office manager in the sheriff’s department, in place of the department clerk and real estate deputy, at this week’s meeting.

Sheriff Sam Bartley said he is looking to create the position to oversee the daily operations of the sheriff’s department on the civil end. He said he currently has one open clerk position, which was created to help when the sheriff’s department took over doing the civil work for all of the magistrate’s offices several years back. He said with that, their workload dramatically increased, by approximately four times the normal amount. He said he looked at the math end of things and talked to the current real estate deputy, with the real estate deputy indicating that they can do the job of the open clerk position.

He said he is looking to save the county thousands of dollars by merging the two positions.

He said the magistrate work provides a lot of work and income for the sheriff’s office, and they have established a good working relationship with the three magistrates. He said this is also work on top of the work they do for the Court of Common Pleas.

Commissioner Scott North asked what kind of compensation Bartley had in mind. Bartley said he did the math for eliminating the clerk position and he would like to add a $7 an hour raise to that position. Bartley said if the employee who would hold that position were to leave, he would not offer that rate of pay and would go back to the original rate of pay.

Commissioner Jeff Pisarcik asked how Bartley came up with the $7 an hour figure. He said the position would then make more than the deputies and that did not make any sense to him.

Bartley said that if he were to hire someone for the open clerk position, the position would start at $14.50 an hour, which comes out to $26,390 yearly for 1, 820 hour seven hour a day work week.

He said they estimated 20 percent of the benefits package at approximately $5,200. He said altogether, a new employee would cost around $31,668 with benefits. He said he took the seven dollars an hour at 1,820 hours at it came out to $12,740. He said subtracting the numbers, the total budget impact savings came out to $18,928.

He said those savings could be higher because he did not have all the numbers for the benefits at his disposal. He took a little less than half of the second position and came up with the $7 an hour raise figure. He said the person is taking on three different magistrates coming into the office, running an office that issues license to carry permits, answering the phones and ordering supplies. He said he has never asked a deputy to sit in the office to take care of the civil end of things. He said they need to be out

doing the criminal end of things.

Commissioner Mark Humes asked how much the position pays an hour now. Bartley said he thinks it is roughly $15 an hour.

Treasurer James “Moon” VanSteenberg said he thought that Bartley was low in his estimation of how much money the county would be saved in benefits. He said on hospitalization alone it is probably $15,000 to $18,000 per person.

Bartley said he could not expect someone to continue working in those conditions with the three magistrates being put on their workload without a raise in pay.

He said this wasn’t fair and he wouldn’t ask that of any employee. He said he does not want to stop doing magistrate work and knows what the responsibility of the sheriff’s office is.

He said this position is a huge asset to the department and there is a lot that goes into it. He said this was a few months coming and was started under Sheriff Carl Gotwald.

North said he sees the value of the position and likes the efficiency of combining the positions. He said in light of the comparison with other county employees and their duties, even in other departments, he felt that a $7 an hour raise would be a stretch.

Bartley said he was not looking to compare to other departments. He said he knows what he has and what he needs in the office and is looking to go about it in the most efficient way possible, while saving money for the county. He said as the sheriff, he feels that amount is justified.

VanSteenberg said many years ago, the treasurer’s office used to have tax claims. He said at that time, the treasurer asked for a stipend to pay for it and it was refused. He said the treasurer then said to take the office out, costing the county more money than the stipend would have cost.

He said they would be cutting the cost of wages for two people to less than half for one person, and he thinks that is a tremendous cost savings to the county.

Pisarcik said in the 20 years he has been with the county, they have eliminated positions in several departments, and they never agreed to give even half of the amount he was asking to those taking over the duties of those positions that were eliminated.

He said they have to consider that they are dealing with taxpayer money. Bartley said he was saving taxpayers money. Pisarcik said that told him that the sheriff’s office didn’t need that position to begin with.

Bartley said they took on the work of the magistrates without any choice and he could not expect someone to take on the work of three magistrates every day without the pay raise. He said that isn’t fair to the employee.

VanSteenberg said doing this would be a good use of taxpayers’ money, as it would save the county a lot. North said he was in favor of merging the position, but at a raise of $2 per hour rather than $7.

Bartley said $2 an hour was not a fair amount.

He made a motion to eliminate the department clerk and real estate deputy positions in the sheriff’s department and create the office manager position with a $7 an hour increase in pay over the current real estate deputy’s rate of pay. The motion was seconded by Humes. The motion passed with Bartley, Humes and VanSteenberg voting yes and North and Pisarcik voting no.

In other business, Bartley asked the salary board for the establishment of a sergeant position in the sheriff’s department. He said the sergeant position was initially created in 2015 by the union. He said the union is no longer established with their office. He said he wanted to have the discussion on creating the position so it will be in writing.

He said right now, there are sheriff, chief deputy and deputy positions in the office. He said he is looking for the sergeant position to be in charge of the deputies working in the field, whether that be transports, during court, serving warrants and for whatever comes up during that shift. He said the sergeant would be the sheriff’s department’s eyes out in the field.

North asked what the rate of compensation would be for the position if it was ratified by the salary board. Bartley said he would be asking for a 50 cent an hour raise for the individual stepping into that position.

Bartley made a motion to establish the sergeant position within the sheriff’s office, compensated at 50 cents per hour on top of the current deputies’ wages. VanSteenberg seconded. The motion passed unanimously.

District Judge John Foradora came before the salary board and made a motion that one of the three supervisors in the probation department be on call each week and to have them compensated at $225 per week. Pisarcik provided the second.

He said the county’s on-call rates are all over the board and need to be standardized, with no employee being compensated more than another for on-call work. He said they found out that morning that there may be people getting on call who shouldn’t be.

Foradora said he knows that has been discussed over the years, but he wanted to correct the issue for his department.

VanSteenberg asked if it was federal law that those on call need to be compensated.

North said he wasn’t wrong. He said the law states that if an individual is on call, there needs to be a level of compensation. He said federal law, as he recalled, doesn’t stipulate what that compensation is. He said the county has different definitions of on call, because being on call means different things to different departments.

He said on-call should have restrictions. He said if those restrictions are part of the on-call work, then there should be compensation. If they weren’t, then it is not actually on call.

VanSteenberg asked what the other departments get for on-call work. Pisarcik said it is all over the place, and North said there are perhaps five or six different rates for on call.

North said when they take a look at the issue further, they should look at setting the standard definitions and rate of compensation for on-call work for the county.

Foradora’s motion passed unanimously.