Commissioners approve $3.7 million for corrections worker raises
Published: Tue, 05/23/23
Commissioners approve $3.7 million for corrections worker raises
A large construction crane began to be assembled Thursday near the Bell County Jail in Belton. The crane will be used in the ongoing Loop Jail Expansion project, Bell County spokesman James Stafford said.
“A smaller crane could be seen erecting the much larger, 160-foot crane Thursday afternoon,” he said. “In accordance with (Federal Aviation Administration) regulations, the crane has been permitted and will be outfitted with flashing lights to make it visible to aircraft.”
The $113 million extension to the Bell County Loop Jail will include a minimum security addition and a mental health wing.
Courtesy of Bell County
Killeen Daily Herald
BY SHANE MONACO | TELEGRAM STAFF
May 22, 2023
A large pay raise for jail and juvenile corrections workers in Bell County could lead to a strained budget next year.
Bell County Commissioners unanimously approved a $3.7 million raise for many of its corrections workers at their meeting Monday. The raise will take effect starting next pay period for the affected employees, with $1.24 million expected to be paid out during the remainder of this fiscal year, which run to Sept. 30.
In recent months, officials have been discussing the need for pay raises for these employees in order to hire and retain staff.
Commissioner Bobby Whitson said that while he doesn’t want to put this increased burden on taxpayers, the Bell County Sheriff’s Department has already tried every other option to recruit employees and the difficulty is linked to pay.
“I have been beating my head against the wall for the past four years trying to understand all this and make sure we make good, sound monetary decisions,” Whitson said. “But it looks like this is the last option we have, and I hate to think about it if we do this and we still don’t attract good employees. We are in a world of hurt.”
Under the new increases, officials said that many of the jail and juvenile justice employees will receive an average of a 22% raise. They said this will help the county go from one of the lowest-paying jail operators in the area to one of the highest.
Sheriff’s Department officials said the average pay for jail workers right now is about $20 an hour, or more than $41,000 a year.
Officials said that the pay raise for these employees is equivalent to more than one additional cent on the county’s property tax rate.
Tina Entrop, the county auditor, said that one cent per $100 of valuation for the county is equal to about $3 million currently.
With this large increase, Entrop said, the county would find it very difficult to maintain the no new revenue rate, which it has done for the past several years. The no new revenue rate is the property tax rate at which the county would have the same budget as last year.
Entrop said this would not necessarily mean increasing taxes, but instead just not lowering them as much as desired.
“It will definitely use up all of the proposed increases in property taxes and sales tax increases as well,” Entrop said. “There are other revenues we are anticipating going up, and while it is really early in the budgeting process, I don’t know if we could get to the no new revenue rate if you do this.”
County Judge David Blackburn stressed this point, and said that approving this item would mean taking a hard look at every other monetary request in the upcoming budget discussions.
“I would (ask) how does this affect, fill in the blank for the rest of the county, not just merit pay,” Blackburn said. “New equipment for any department, new positions for any department, you just go down the list for the whole budget. This takes up just about all the capacity for everything we do.”
Regardless of how much this pay increase stresses the budget, officials said it was needed now in order to staff the county’s jail expansion that is currently under construction.
Commissioners said it would take about a year to hire and train all the employees it needs to run the facility. They also pointed out that the new facility is needed to recall all the inmates the county has currently located at other facilities across the state due to a lack of space locally.
The county has reported spending roughly $500,000 a month on housing these inmates at other facilities, which it would save once the new jail is operational.
“We have to fill this jail to begin with or we will have a $100 million facility sitting out here with nobody in it and we will still be spending $6 million a year or more housing prisoners somewhere else,” Whitson said.
During the meeting, Blackburn said that he does not know when in the county’s history there has been a larger compensation adjustment for employees than what the Commissioners approved.
Despite this large increase, Blackburn said that he knows the county will most likely need to come back and look at salaries.
“Compensation is something that you always chase, it is never static,” Blackburn said. “Next month, someone will do something else and on October 1, someone will do something else and it is just the nature of the beast.”
April Metcalf, director of human resources for the county, said that she hopes the county will be able to fill all the vacant positions before the next fiscal year begins in October
I feel it is prudent to share that just doing this increase is not going to magically make the out-of-county (inmate population) go down,” Metcalf said. “Until there is more space, we are still going to have the out-of-county (population).”