York Supervisor Opposes Raises for School Employees

By Amber Lester Kennedy Saturday, April 02, 2011

If one member of the York County Board of Supervisors gets his way, York County school employees won’t see any pay increases in the next budget.

At a March 29 work session, York County Supervisor Walt Zaremba proposed the Board of Supervisors cut the education budget even deeper than the county’s proposed $337,000 trim in response to the School Board’s request for level funding.

Zaremba said the budget “failed to recognize economic reality.” “We wanted a sense of ‘We know times are bad,’” he said. “We know that we are not immune to the ills associated with the economy when it is down.”

Although the Board of Supervisors told the school division they planned to cut its budget, the School Board requested level funding when it adopted a $116 million budget that incorporated a $1.2 million step pay increase for eligible licensed and nonlicensed employees. That raise was made possible when the division received an unexpected $700,444 in state funding. In addition, the General Assembly approved a lower employer contribution rate to the Virginia Retirement System than originally anticipated; the lower rate resulted in an additional savings of $569,718.

The school division’s step compensation plan has 30 steps.

The plan is intended to move employees up one step each year of service. Sometimes the step increase results in a pay increase, but sometimes it doesn’t. When employees reach the top step, they are no longer eligible for step pay increases. A step pay increase differs from an across-the-board salary increase, which would raise the salary scales equally for each position in every pay grade.

The division’s proposal would effectively give 1.5 percent pay increases to the 1,600 employees who would see a pay increase when they moved up a step. Approximately 200 employees would not receive a pay increase when they moved up a step, according to York County Schools Chief Financial Officer Dennis Jarrett. The division has not given step pay increases in three years.

Zaremba objected not only to the request for level funding, but to the idea of giving raises when no county employees have seen raises in the past three years. Admitting his comments would make him unpopular, Zaremba said the requests were “not a very smart thing to do.”

“I suspect that our sheriff’s deputies would like pay raises. I suspect our fire and life safety people would like a pay raise. I suspect your county staff would like a pay raise,” he said, adding that he suspected residents would like to see pay raises in the form of lower taxes.

He alleged Superintendent Eric Williams never discussed his proposal to ask for level funding with County Administrator James McReynolds. He also pointed out that the division received a “$3.5 million gift from the Obama administration,” referring to one-time funds received by the division from the Federal Jobs Fund. That money was used to give bonuses late last year, and would not be spent in fiscal year 2012, Jarrett said.

Zaremba proposed the board consider cutting more than originally suggested. “My proposal to this board is that we consider the idea that if you disagree with the school division giving their employees a pay raise at the expense of folks on the county side, then we’ve got a week to give this man [McReynolds] direction in terms of what we want…that we may not only want to dock $337,000, but we’ll do whatever it takes to stop that pay raise,” he said.

Supervisor Sheila Noll agreed with some of his points, saying, “It is sort of a stick it in your eye that the school board is not willing to go along with some of the pain also.”

But ultimately, some of the supervisors were not comfortable with the proposal to cut more than $337,000. Supervisor Don Wiggins agreed the schools’ administration could communicate better with the Board of Supervisors and county administration.

The York Board of Supervisors will vote on the budget at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the East Room at York Hall. In the event they do not approve level funding for schools, the administration will identify potential adjustments for school board approval. If that happened, Jarrett estimates the school board will approve a revised budget by the end of April.