Carbon County again adjusted the salaries of employees, as job descriptions and duties are reexamined following a salary study and new wage scale implemented at the start of the year.

One of the salaries adjusted was for the GIS director, Jason Shelhammer, who received a 3-cent raise at the beginning of the year under the new scale.

That salary was adjusted from $22.55 to $23.67 an hour.

Another salary for an executive secretary/open records officer received a bump, but not as much of one as listed on the agenda for the county Salary Board on Thursday.

The salary was set to go from $18.29 to $20.19 an hour, but Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said the position already saw an increase of 15.19% as the result of the salary study.

“What is being proposed without merit justification is an additional increase of 10%, which would have this position increasing 25% within a matter of months,” he said. “It seems an inappropriate increase.”

Commissioner Wayne Nothstein disagreed, saying the increase was merited based on the duties performed and should have been addressed previously.

Lukasevich said it does not take away from the “fine job” done by the employee, who works in the commissioners’ office, but the increase is not justified on paper.

He pointed out a similar situation in the Controller’s Office which did not result in a similar increase and moved to modify the increase from $18.29 to $18.75 an hour.

Lukasevich’s modified motion carried 3-1 with Nothstein opposed, saying he felt it should be at the rate proposed.

Commissioner Rocky Ahner, who voted for the smaller increase, said he wanted to comment, because the commissioners’ office is losing people and the county administrator is repositioning people.

“I’d like to have this position reviewed before the budget comes out to actually reflect what this job entails,” Ahner said. “I can see where Chris is at, and I see you want to stay on the line of what the job study does, but this job is probably going to change within the next month.”

The Salary Board also increased the wages of four assistant deputy warden and one deputy warden positions to bring them above the employees that they supervise, Nothstein said.

The hourly rates for the assistant warden positions went from $23.67 to $26.11; $23.67 to $26.76, $24.26 to $28.82, and $26.12 to $29.54; and the deputy warden rate went from $28.08 to $31.77 an hour.

The board also increased the salary of the solicitor for Children & Youth Services from $67,000 to $75,000.

Following the adjustments, Ahner called the original raise of three cents an hour at the start of the year for the GIS director “a slap in the face,” and said he would have preferred not giving any raise.

But through the appeals process, an updated job description garnered the employee in this position an additional $1.12 an hour, he said.

The county has to continue to review its job descriptions and update them every few years, as other employers do on a regular basis, Ahner said.

The wage study brought up the lowest paid employees, but also nearly froze the wages of higher paid employees. The few-cent increases that some employees received was a demotivating force in the county, Ahner said.

“Eighty five percent of the county’s employees got a substantial raise and now we’re working on the other 15%,” he said.

Lukasevich said there was an unfounded lack of faith in the process, saying reviews and increases made to the salaries of employees in elections, purchasing and now the GIS director are examples of having faith and confidence in the leadership of the county.

“Individuals that didn’t have that departed,” he said. “As soon as they departed, within a couple months, as the process took place, there is a notable increase commensurate with the adjustments to the duties and responsibilities.”

Nothstein said he continues to believe that the county rushed into the salary study and started to implement the wages before the issues, namely job descriptions, were straightened out.

Ahner did not believe they rushed into the salary study, as the county worked toward the changes for two years. Rather, the county waited too long before addressing the issues, he said.

The county still has close to 80 positions to be re-evaluated. Lukasevich said about a dozen needed to be addressed immediately, and others were lower priority and will be addressed in a timely manner.

Many of those positions are in the courts, which began the appeals process about a month behind the other departments, Ahner said.