County Council amends and finalizes Salary Ordinance

On Wednesday, February 11, the Washington County Council reconvened to amend the Salary Ordinance. Attorney Alyssa Cochran stated that there were enough questions left unanswered to warrant another special meeting in order to address and fix any remaining issues. She then explained what they planned to address in the meeting.

Attorney Alyssa Cochran

“There were some positions that we had talked about switching over to hourly, and by state statute, cannot,” said Attorney Cochran. “There are required salary positions. In particular, probation officers have set salaries by the state and by statute…We’ve circulated some language that gives flexibility in this ordinance. When the council passes this ordinance, there is an addendum, and it lists what the annual salary is or what the hourly rate is… For those employees that are overtime-eligible, we have some proposed language here that essentially allows the department heads to say, ‘okay, this person is listed as hourly, but we want them to be a salary position but still overtime-eligible.’ There is a method for calculating that at the auditor’s office, and then that can be updated without amending the ordinance to give some more discretion to the department head. They know their employees and what works for them and their schedules.

“This is only for overtime-eligible employees, which is most of the employees that work for the county,” she continued. “This really has no impact on the salary exempt, not overtime-eligible employees, which is a lot of the elected officials and department heads… There has already been a discussion and a vote about how the first paycheck of the year would be calculated, so I don’t know that we need to revisit any of that. What you’re here to discuss today is just a final approval of this draft language. If you want this kind of flexibility in the ordinance or not, that we've incorporated for department heads and overtime individuals, or if you don't want that language. And then I believe Karen [Wischmeier] had raised some questions about the salary individuals and their biweekly rate because we still have that original ordinance that had an annual rate and the biweekly rate based upon 26 pay periods. That's what we're still ultimately trying to correct because those two numbers were inconsistent. In this draft amendment before you, salary individuals are getting their approved, budgeted-for, annual salary broken up over 27 pay periods. So, there can be a discussion, or someone can make a motion to approve the 2026 amended salary ordinance that's been circulated. It's up for you all to decide.”

Councilman Preston Shell

“How will we do the hourly?” asked Councilman Preston Shell. “They'll be paid hourly? Like the county highway, and the sheriff's department?”

“So, many employees that were previously listed in the addendum as salary non-exempt, overtime eligible, are now listed as just having an hourly rate,” replied Cochran. “Those employees will receive that hourly rate for however many hours they work.”

“And we will have to go back and back pay them?” asked Shell.

“Yes,” said Cochran. “The auditor's office is working on that piece of it. It's a lot of employees, it's a lot of information to update and double check, but we weren't going to do any changes until we were sure everyone agreed because they definitely don't want to make a change and then have to go back and change it again.”

“One paragraph you've got in the changes states salaries exempt and non-exempt receiving their biweekly paychecks with the total in the addendum,” said Councilwoman Karen Wischmeier. “So, I'm assuming we're going to, like I mentioned in the email back, give them the extra paycheck to pick up their extra two weeks, because the original wording in the ordinance states that it's based on hours worked, even though it's paid hours worked for every two week period. So, that would mean that the salaried people, if we're going back to the original ordinance, would get the extra paycheck?”

Councilwoman Karen Wischmeier

“This amendment is not adopting– it's just new,” replied Cochran. “So, this will be new moving forward. It's not going back to the language. The only things going back to the original ordinance are the rates for the hourly individuals. So, salary individuals are paid based upon their salary. We have overtime and non-overtime. The people who are not eligible for overtime, of course, it doesn't matter how many hours they work. They're going to get paid the same biweekly rate. For salary overtime eligible, they get a base pay, and then if they do work overtime, they get paid on top of that. So, what this is saying is that the salary employees will receive biweekly paychecks during each pay period of 2026, with the total of those biweekly paychecks amounting to the annual salary that's listed in addendum A. So that means that their annual rate, when you add up all those biweekly paychecks, will total whatever that annual amount is in addendum A.”

The council then voted on the ordinance, and it passed unanimously.

“I don't want to speak for the council, but I'm going to kind of speak for the council here,” began Council President Brad Gilbert. “I think it's important for everyone to understand that this is something that we took very seriously. I think we came together quickly, and we worked diligently in the last ten days since the last meeting to get this corrected and fixed. Mr. Shell brought up a very important point about getting the back pay so we could get that settled. And the quicker we did this, the quicker we can get to that. As Alyssa said, the auditor's office has already started on that. So, thank you for the work on that. So, I think this is a win for the employees, and a win for the taxpayers as well. So, thank you all and the council for the due diligence that we went through on that. Do I have any department heads here that would like to speak?”

Stephanie Rockey stood up to asked a question regarding salaries for elected officials.

“So, for clarification, the elected officials and salary employees will still be spread out across 27 pays, and then the hourly employees will be back to the October–” said Rockey.

“Yes,” replied Gilbert. “Did that make sense?”

“Yes. It's just that the salary elected officials weren't brought up to where they– it's going to be spread out in 27 pays,” said Rockey.

“It was too late for us to–” began Gilbert. “With the true salary employees, it just takes their salary and divides it over however many pays that the county pays. So, that's the reason that there wouldn't be an adjustment for them, because it just takes the salary and divides it by the pay cadence.”

Michelle Fleenor from the auditor’s office then explained that there will be an email sent to all of the departments in order to communicate the changes they voted on during the meeting.

As Gilbert went around the room asking if anyone had any additional comments, Commissioner Todd Ewen announced that the ambulance service has decided to “remount” an ambulance.

Commissioner Todd Ewen

“For the sake of transparency, I wanted to let everybody know that the ambulance service is going to remount an ambulance, and it's going to cost around $205,000,” said Ewen. “We've got to get our foot in the door, so to speak, and get this in the pipeline because it's a six month process. Due to the Covid funds, we were fortunate enough to purchase two brand new ambulances back a few years ago, which kind of got us ahead of the game, but time has gone by and we need to remount. This will not be an additional appropriation. It will be within the amount of the stipend. Historically in the last four, five or six years, the ambulance service has needed about $350,000 of the amount of the stipend. We normally budget around anywhere between $550,000 and $650,000. I believe the stipend is $650,000 for the coming year, so we'll be well within our budget. Just want to let everybody know that this process is going to take place. We're going to go ahead and get that in order. And next year we will also have another one, a remount. We won't need to purchase a new one. A new ambulance right now, complete, is knocking on the door of $400,000. So, this is basically half the amount. We'll get a new cab and chassis for the existing box that we have. Just wanted to let you know.”

Following this, Councilman Preston Shell raised some concerns he has regarding his view on how the commissioners are spending money.

“I'm concerned about where the commissioners swapped the land,” said Shell. “That is still money. Whether you was to swap the land and or not. It's still money, and we should have some say so about that. It was just brought to us and said we couldn't vote on it, but I think we should have voted on it, but I don't know.”

“I do,” said Commissioner Ewen. “That's the commissioners' decision, and it didn't require– there's no funds. It was a swap, and it's all legal. You can have your attorneys check on it. It's been talked about for going on two years, so. But if you can come up with anything contrary to what we've done, then I'm all ears.”

“That is an issue that I discussed with Dave Umpleby, who was here, who presented on that, who is the attorney for the commissioners,” said Alyssa Cochran. “We went through the statutes and how they had structured the arrangements. I'm happy to share and send to the whole council the statutes that we were relying upon and working on when it was determined that that transfer didn't require a council vote. But I have the communications with the other attorney about those statutes, and I'm happy to share that with the council.”

“I guess my question would be then, is one of those statutes 36-2-3.5-5?” asked Councilwoman Wischmeier. “Because it states that you have to have council approval for any type of asset sale or swap. So, I feel like if that wasn't in there, there's definitely a legal loophole that the council has a right to stand on at that point. That's a hell of a sized asset to be just handing over to somebody.”

“I want to piggyback on what Karen is saying in reference to the exact code that she's talking about,” began Council President Brad Gilbert. “It defines approval of sale or exchange. According to that code, the county council has the authority to authorize the sale or transfer of land. Value thresholds: if the land being swapped has a value of $1,000 or more, the transaction must be authorized by an ordinance of the county fiscal body, which is this county council, fixing the terms and conditions. The reason that I wanted to mention that is because the question is– we understand that there is a state statute that was basing the decision on that it was the commissioners' discretion. The council is just asking for clarification because this is a state statute that says the opposite. The council is asking which statute is applicable in this case?”

Council President Brad Gilbert

“I will certainly show you the statutes that were relied upon and look at the particular statute that you're referencing,” said Cochran. “I will just say as a general comment: state statutes are very, very detailed and technical. Words are commonly defined, and those definitions are not always intuitive. What you would think a word means is not necessarily how the statute has defined it. So, anytime we're looking at a statute, we have to read that language. We have to go back to the definition section, read all those definitions and make sure we're applying all the words correctly. So, I am sure that somewhere in those statutes it is clearer as to which one governs in this particular situation. And a lot of that is based upon how the transaction itself was structured. So, I'm happy to address those questions and point everyone to the applicable statutes.”

“Thank you for getting that information,” replied Gilbert. “I think we're just asking for clarification and transparency and we'll see where that goes from there.”

The meeting then came to an end after a motion to adjourn was passed.