A remark by County Mayor Mike Foster concerning the implementation of a wage scale for county general employees at last week’s county commission meeting prompted some county officials to issue a statement disagreeing with the idea of raises based on job classification.
Foster has voiced a desire to establish a step system based on job classification and years of service for several months, but some officials disagree with his position, saying that while they support step increases based on years of service, raises based on job classification may case unrest among employees.
The day after the meeting last week, Register of Deeds Jeff McMillen, County Clerk Mike Clayborn, Trustee Sean Driver, Circuit Court Clerk Katherine Pack and Clerk and Master Deborah Malone issued the following collective statement:
“We as county officials have only asked for step raises based on years of service. At this time, we don't feel that job classifications are in the best interest of DeKalb County. It is our belief that job titles will be divisive and will kill morale and unity of the county offices. Government will not efficiently operate without all offices working together. Therefore, we would hate to see anything done that would undermine this spirit of unity that exists now.”
Employees of the mayor, county clerk, circuit clerk, clerk and master, election commission, trustee, register of deeds and property assessor’s office are all budgeted to make $23,024 per year except for one  employee in the property assessor’s office who receives $28,579.
That employee receives a higher salary because he must use his personal vehicle to visit properties to be evaluated.
At last week’s meeting, Foster spoke again of his wish to consider job classification in the matter of county pay scales.
“Some counties are like us where nearly everybody makes the same amount of money,” the mayor said. “Some of them are grossly different from ours. We've got to do a lot more work before we try to figure out what we're going to do. A lot of that is going to be up to the department heads to come up with job descriptions so that we can implement the step raises.”
Foster said the current scale is not fair to some long-time employees of county offices.
“There's obvious differences in some of the positions,” Foster shared. “Some of them have been there a long time. In my office, I've got one who has been there for 11 years and one who has been there for one year and they make the same exact amount. I agree that i’ts probably not appropriate, but that's the system we're under right now. I think we need to work to make some corrections. We're not ready to vote on it tonight. We will work on that and work with the department heads and see if we can come up with some solutions.”