A shift differential request for Shawano County Sheriff’s Department dispatchers and jail corrections officers was pretty much declared dead on arrival when the county’s Executive Committee met July 17.
While an option to hire one additional person for each area was approved, there is no guarantee those jobs will survive the budget-making process this fall.
That leaves Sheriff George Lenzner and other staff to find alternate ways to entice new recruits and retain the current staff.
“I think us as managers … we wanted to present this to our committee and to this committee,” Lenzner said of the 50 cents per hour proposal. “We wanted to let you know the public sector’s been doing this for years. Law enforcement has been doing this for years, usually in patrol. The last few years, dispatch and jail have been doing it to retain people and to attract people.”
The shift differential would add $30,825 to the annual jail budget and $12,592 to the annual sheriff’s department budget for dispatchers.
Lenzner said he understands the county does not have a lot of discretionary funds in the budget.
“We understand the costs,” said Julie Hasser, human resources director. “We understand that maybe it won’t fix everything.”
Supervisor Tess Serrano pointed to a recent news article about dispatchers in Langlade County. Dispatchers there get a $5,000 sign-on bonus, a $5,000 retention bonus and a $5 per hour stipend for overtime. Also, the county regularly uses Marathon County dispatchers.
“The gist of the whole article also was that close to the $250,000 Langlade County spent didn’t solve the problem,” County Board Chairman Tom Kautza said. “But you still have people showing up for second shift, third shift. All this is going to do is give people more incentive to work second shift or third shift. The problem is you need more bodies.”
Supervisor Kathy Luebke noted the nearly $159,000 spent on overtime for dispatch.
“Why aren’t we hiring an extra person or two?”she asked.
Communications Supervisor Kasey Cross said they are trying but have not been successful in keeping a full staff, much less adding staff.
“It’s hard to fill weekends and holidays,” Lenzner said.
He cited the jail’s cook position that has been open for about a month. The job requires starting at 3:30 a.m. and working a 10-hour shift with a starting wage of $16.47 per hour. He said people can work at McDonald’s for more pay and better hours.
“It’s not easy to find employees,” he said.
Supervisor Randy Young said he believed if a shift differential is paid, it needs to be more.
“Definitely, a shift differential is necessary,” Supervisor Ken Capelle said.
Others expressed concern that if jailers and dispatchers get paid more for night and weekend work, employees from other departments will demand the same.
“Put one more person in your budget, and we’ll see what happens,” Kautza said.
Serrano said her concern is that adding costs for two new employees to the budget will be the first thing supervisors cut when balancing the numbers.
“It isn’t fair to them,” she said. “We do all this, and all of a sudden at budget time: ‘We don’t have the money. You can’t have it now.’”
“Well, everybody else has to do that if they want another employee,” Kautza responded.
Jim Davel, administrative coordinator, said the costs for each additional position would be brought before the committee at its next meeting.
“As long as the suggestion is to add a person for jail, add a person for dispatch, that’s not the first thing that gets cut with the budget then,” Serrano said.
“We’ll have to see how much money we got,” Kautza said.
“I’m just saying, we come with a shift differential request, and your suggestion is to add a person in jail and dispatch, which we would love to do, but don’t make that the first thing that gets cut when the budget’s over budget for this department,” Serrano said.
“That’s what this committee is supposed to do,” Kautza said, as the level of supervisors’ voices raised noticeably.
Kautza said the committee needs to balance the budget, and to add to one department, something must be taken from others.
“We assign the priorities with the money,” he said. “You take from somewhere else to fill where there’s a need.”
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
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