Reiterating that the sheriff’s department would rather offer a 50-cent per hour pay differential for second shift and weekend working dispatchers and correctional officers, Supervisor Tess Serrano urged the Shawano County Executive Committee to make that part of the proposed 2025 budget.
The committee denied the request at its Aug. 21 meeting. Instead, the committee added funds to pay for one more jailer and one more dispatcher.
“But if you can’t get qualified candidates to fill positions, why wouldn’t you go with retaining the people that you have at a 50-cent shift differential?” Serrano said.
“The question came up about the long-term solution vs. the 50-cent thing, and this committee discussed it’s really not something that’s going to make a huge difference,” said Jim Davel, county coordinator.
“There’s no use getting into all that discussion today, because then you’d have to give 50 cents to everybody,” added Shawano County Board Chairman Tom Kautza.
Supervisor Kathy Luebke asked if the two new positions were in the proposed budget.
“Yes, and if they make it, they make it. If they don’t, they don’t,” Kautza said. “We didn’t vote to pass it, so that means it’s a no. You gotta watch what you guys discuss at your meetings, because you can’t just bring stuff up. That wasn’t on your agenda, Tess.”
“It was in the sheriff’s comments,” Serrano said, noting that the information was presented by Chief Deputy Ty Raddant in place of Sheriff George Lenzner, who was out of town at a conference.
“We did build in the position. I wouldn’t argue that it’s going to be tough to fill, but you got your long-term solution,” Davel said.
He said the county has already given jailers and dispatchers an increase in paid time off, one bonus for corrections officers and adopted new pay scale that gave raises to all employees.
“We need to get after finding those people,” he said.
“They don’t want two positions; they want 50 cents,” Supervisor Ken Capelle said.”These two positions are costing us a lot of money. Why don’t we take them out of here?”
“The two positions would be an answer to the problem,” said Kautza. “The problem they have is that the people that are given their time off can’t use their time off because they have to come in because there aren’t enough people to work the extra hours.
“It’s not a matter of giving them an extra 50 cents to work second shift. That’s not going to solve nothing. The problem is the number of people you have working there.
“We threw money at the jailers — $3 an hour — didn’t solve the problem. We (gave them) a 6% pay raise. They didn’t the full 6% because of the three bucks an hour. Then we did a full reevaluation of the whole thing, and everybody got raises again then. Didn’t solve the problem. So, what’s throwing more money at it going to do?”
He added that a recent survey showed only 10% of employees quitting at the county did so due to pay.
“Yes, it will be hard to fill,” Davel said. “We shouldn’t stop trying to do the right thing because it’s hard. Nobody said it was easy. If you look at the amount of pay raises that has been given and the amount of PTO and accrual rate from everybody over there that gets higher than anybody in the county, and they can’t take the time, do you really think 50 cents is going to make a damn difference? I don’t believe
“They’ve got to start doing more effort in recruitment.”
Kautza asked if anyone had approached the employees recently laid off at the Mattoon lumber business.
“What’s the recruitment that’s being done?” he said. “They take out a little ad. Well, we put it in the website. There ain’t nobody looking at that website.”
Serrano said many applicants can’t make the cut for background checks.
“What do you think’s going to happen with 42 people who probably, and I’m just saying probably because I don’t know exact figures, 25 of them are Hispanic nondocumented workers?” she said. “You’re not going to get them in the sheriff’s department.”
“Well, you got to get documented ones,” Kautza said. “You’ve got to make more of an effort to reach out.
“You already have people willing to come in second shift and third shift. So, paying them more to come in second shift and third shift is only going to get you to have more people that are willing to work second shift and third shift.”
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
Pay differential argued again, knocked down
