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Commissioner wants to cap longevity pay
By Brandi Hart, McKinney Courier-Gazette
Commissioner Jerry Hoagland is resuming his quest to limit longevity pay for unelected Collin County employees.
Hoagland asked during Tuesday’s commissioners court meeting to have the issue of longevity pay placed on a future meeting agenda.
Hoagland said after the meeting that he wants an actuarial study to be done to forecast the cost of the longevity pay program for employees. He also wants to establish a cap for the program for people who currently receive money from it, Hoagland said. Though he doesn’t know when, he envisions a time when new employees would not be eligible for longevity pay.
Longevity pay has already been approved for the 2007-08 fiscal year, which begins on Monday.
Hoagland did not say he wanted to replace the longevity pay program with a reward pay system — as he suggested last year — because the county already has a pay-for-performance program. The county is still implementing pay-for-performance in all county departments, Hoagland said.
Hoagland asked to phase out the longevity pay program for employees last year, bringing up the issue a week after commissioners voted to end longevity pay for elected officials. The issue did not pass.
Constable Jerry Kunkle has since sued the county over the elimination of longevity pay for elected officials, stating the action constituted an illegal pay cut.
During Tuesday’s meeting, commissioners rejected a request to add a payroll clerk to the sheriff’s office for the 2007-08 fiscal year.
Sheriff Terry Box originally asked for the commissioners to create the position at the Sept. 11 meeting. The commissioners did not approve it because Box and his employees still needed to cut some overtime positions and payments to justify the position. Box told the court on Sept. 11, which is when commissioners approved the 2007-08 budget, that the position would not require an increase in the sheriff’s office budget.
The office is cutting a deputy position at the University Drive Courts Facility in the next 30 days, an annual savings of $50,000 in overtime, Box said. He will also cut one of the two deputy positions that work when juries are called in the jury services department, which will save the sheriff’s office $11,000 in overtime in the 2007-08 fiscal year, Box said. He is cutting overtime cost that he has had for the last several years, Box said.
“I’m asking you please approve due to the fact that our budget this year, without the help of Rodney’s (Rhoades, finance and budget director) employees help for several weeks, believe it or not we completed our budget. We even turned it in late for the first time. (We had) $35 million last year and five different budgets, and we need that help. The information that the budget officer requires now requires a great deal of research and those employees who are researching it right now are my command staff and that do a certain job. I’m asking for you to approve the addition for the clerk,” Box said.
Commissioners Phyllis Cole and Hoagland, and County Judge Keith Self did not second a motion made by Commissioner Joe Jaynes to approve the creation of the position.
Hoagland thought the sheriff’s office, IT department and finance department need to be centralized, he said. He respectfully disagreed with the sheriff, but said he appreciated the cuts in the overtime positions.
Jaynes said he wanted to approve the creation of the new position because the sheriff’s office is one of the county’s largest departments, and has five budgets to oversee each fiscal year.
“I think they’re big enough to have somebody working with Rodney,” Jaynes said.
The court also decided to have public works director Jon Kleinheksel look at options with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay back J.D. Rollins and other residents whose property was damaged because of construction of county roads when unseasonal rains fell over Collin County last summer.
Rollins asked the county to pay for six loads of rock to replace the gravel that was washed away during construction of County Road 419, southeast of Anna, by county crews during torrential rain last summer. Rollins said he believes the construction of the road helped cause some of his driveway to wash away, along with the flooding. He asked that the rock be replaced before winter.
Kleinheksel said he has seen thousands of requests to repair people’s property along county roads due to the rainy summer. He also said he has not seen anything like the torrential rain that occurred over the summer in his years of working with the county. He is expected to return to the commissioner’s court in two to four weeks with a recommendation for Rollins’ property.
He also wanted to have the alignment of the Dallas North Tollway in regards to Farm-to-Market Road 428 placed on an agenda for a future court meeting.
The court also approved a 4 percent pay increase for elections administrator Sharon Rowe.
The court also unanimously approved the following people to boards and commissions: Pamela Nishimoto to the Collin County Historical Commission and re-appointed Don Grissom to the Healthcare Advisory Board, Lolisa Laenger to the Collin County Historical Commission and Joe Cordina to the Planning Board.
The commissioners did not discuss the Nov. 6 transportation, facility and open space county bond election. However, Self will discuss why people should not vote for the transportation bond proposal and Jaynes will discuss why people should vote for the transportation bond proposal in a public forum at 7 p.m. Oct. 11. The event will be sponsored by the McKinney Area Republican Women’s group and will be at the auditorium at McKinney High School, 1400 Wilson Creek Pkwy.
In other news, the commissioners:
All commissioners except Jack Hatchell were present at the meeting.
The court will not hold a workshop meeting Monday as planned because not all commissioners can attend.
Contact staff writer Brandi Hart at hartb@acnpapers.com. To post comments online, access this story at www.scntx.com.
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