Mar. 30—As Sutter County continues to deal with revenue challenges that affect its ability to attract and retain county employees, the Sutter County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday delayed the approval of salary increases for some of its workers.
Up for approval was a county recommendation that some employees receive a small pay bump and that others have their salary ranges adjusted. Some of those positions include "employees in the Confidential, Deputy County Counsels and Assistant County Counsel, elected department heads, and unrepresented Management employee bargaining units," according to a county staff report.
The county noted that with the inability to offer more competitive salaries, it has been unable to keep up with similar jurisdictions.
Sutter County Administrator Steve Smith said Tuesday that 16% of county positions are currently vacant. He said last year the county had vacancies of around 20% — mostly due to staffing shortages for the sheriff's department and fire department.
"Since May 2020, the Board has approved wage and equity increases with all bargaining units that will be in place through 2024. During the same period, most unrepresented employees have received a 2% cost of living adjustment (COLA). This has contributed to a significant loss of position in the market, making recruitment and retention challenging," the county said in a staff report. "The proposed increases will bring the unrepresented employees to the same level as GSP [General, Supervisory and Professional] in terms of percentages of increase. A cross-section of non-department head employee classifications across confidential,
management and County Counsel units shows that these positions are below the market average by a range of 11.3% to 32.0% when compared to the standard counties that Sutter County uses for comparison. Department head classifications, both elected and appointed, now lag from 9.2% to 67.6% below their counterparts in the same comparable counties."
Had the board approved the increases and changes on Tuesday, the county said the cost of a 2% wage and 3% equity adjustment was estimated at approximately $153,000 in the current fiscal year ($107,000 General Fund), $1.7 million in fiscal year 2023/24 ($1.2 million General Fund), and $1.7 million in fiscal year 2024/25 ($1.2 million General Fund).
"In this recommendation it covers basically unrepresented people — meaning they're not in a union, such as confidential staff in the human resources department or different managers and supervisory employees throughout the county," Smith said, who noted it's about 120 employees who have not received a previously considered raise package. "We know that Sutter County has the second to least employees per capita of the 31 counties in California with a population under 200,000. These are many of the folks that put in the extra time to make up that difference for being short staffed in various departments in addition to the vacancy rate. These are the people that are kind of the boots-on-the-ground people for implementing the goals and priorities for the board of supervisors.
"Additionally, we have continued costs without increases, in that having turnover of vital positions where folks have a lot of institutional knowledge and over the past couple of years we've had multiple failed recruitments for department heads, assistant department heads and other unrepresented positions. We've had to go, at times and after losing a long-term employee to a neighboring jurisdiction, raise the salary by a significant amount to attract another person, but we still lost that institutional knowledge through that process."
District 1 Supervisor Nick Micheli said he wanted to vote for the pay raises because the county employees "deserve it." However, after voters rejected Measure A, a one cent sales tax increase on some goods that would have increased revenues for the county, Micheli said the situation has changed.
"You're overworked, you're underpaid because of the vacancies. I'm well aware of that. This county has been doing more with less for a very long time," Micheli said. "I was hoping that we would be in this position after having passed a sales tax measure — would have made this a whole lot easier. ... I know that you deserve more and I want to vote for this, however I have some reservations as we're getting closer to our budget hearings about the tight, fiscal crunch that we're going to be in here. As I said, I really had hoped we'd be in a different position here having passed Measure A. But it is what it is."
District 3 Supervisor Mike Ziegenmeyer said in running a business, he too has had to deal with the challenge of keeping quality employees because of competition from others that have the ability to offer higher salaries.
"I run a business. I look at my budget and I see what I can afford. And it stinks, it absolutely stinks. I get so sick and tired of losing good people," Ziegenmeyer said. "... I'm in awe of our colleagues, our coworkers, and what they do and the hours they put in. The hours that no one knows about, the stress of it."
Ziegenmeyer said he would feel "more comfortable" bringing the issue of potential pay raises to the board in June as it goes through the budget process. He said there were a lot of county departments that could use additional funding, but he would want the board to see what's available before committing to any salary adjustments.
District 2 Supervisor Dan Flores said he was completely supportive of the salary adjustments presented Tuesday, but also wanted to have the Sutter County Grand Jury investigate the salaries of all county elected officials, under the provisions of California Penal Code 927.
Under that code, a "grand jury may, and when requested by the board of supervisors shall, investigate and report upon the needs for increase or decrease in salaries of the county-elected officials. A copy of such report shall be transmitted to the board of supervisors."
Flores said as an elected member of the board, he didn't feel comfortable making recommendations for elected official salaries.
"I'm just not sure how we as a board can officially make a recommendation for elected officials without some sort of conflict of interest accusation," Flores said.
Sutter County Auditor/Controller Nate Black said as an elected department head that he was "not a big fan" of Flores' suggestion that the Sutter County Grand Jury possibly determine salaries for elected officials, which would inevitably delay the actual implementation of those salaries.
"I've been here eight-and-a-half years and I hope you know that elected officials, the six of us, we don't get any kind of step increase until our 10th year in office. We don't get the 104 admin hours that every other department head and manager gets in the county," Black said. "It doesn't matter that we work or that we're supposed to be full-time department heads. I'm a little baffled. It's incredibly difficult to think of this as a career with such little support in our compensation. I wonder what are we doing. I understand our sales tax didn't come through, so we have incredible fiscal challenges. ... We've been waiting a year. ... Management unit always gets the same as GSP as soon as that's done. Twice now, we haven't. The start of COVID we got jacked and now we're getting jacked again a year later. ... That's just a bummer."
According to information provided by the county from a 2023 salary survey, nearly all Sutter County department heads make less than similar positions in comparable counties.
Black, for example, makes 37% below the average salary of an auditor/controller when compared to Yuba, Shasta, Butte, Nevada, and Napa counties.
Flores clarified that he does believe that elected officials do deserve a raise and pointed to research that shows that elected officials such as Black do deserve more compensation.
"If the grand jury were to come up with a higher recommendation, we'd be accepting that recommendation most likely. I'm not speaking for the whole board, but that would be the consideration that I'd have in mind. ... It doesn't have anything to do with not deserving the raises," Flores said.
Newly elected Sutter County District Attorney Jennifer Dupre said that should the county decide to go through the grand jury process described by Flores, then it would take possibly up to three years before actual pay raises were seen.
"One thing that people should keep in mind is that the elected department heads run for office because we love this county," Dupre said. "... It's hard to consider it a career when we could be getting paid more with a heck of a lot less stress, a lot less responsibility, and annual raises."
Dupre said in her new role with Sutter County, she gets paid less each pay period than when she was a supervisor and worked fewer hours with less responsibilities at her previous job.
Micheli and Ziegenmeyer both expressed a desire to see what the new county budget would look like with the addition of the pay raises before actually voting on the matter.
"Let's get through these budget hearings. Let's input these numbers so then as a whole all five of us feel comfortable with saying, 'hey, we know the money's there, we budgeted for it, let's go for it,'" Ziegenmeyer said.
Smith confirmed that the county will have to make cuts in the next budget, including existing county services, despite any potential salary adjustments.
"I don't agree with the thought that, OK let's build the budget, make sure we don't have to have any cuts, and then we can give people raises when people are 30%, 40%, 60% under market," Smith said. "I think you have to give some sort of raise to those officials and make the cuts that you have to cut, because we're going to lose people. ... Regardless, we're going to have to make cuts in the next couple years with or without these raises. So, I want to keep the best people possible to guide us in making those decisions, those very difficult decisions amongst the departments."
District 5 Supervisor Mat Conant, who echoed some of the same concerns by Micheli and Ziegenmeyer, made a motion to table the vote on the recommended salary adjustments until May 9 after the first budget workshop. All three voted yes for that action. Both Flores and District 4 Supervisor and Chair Karm Bains voted no.
