(Audubon) The Audubon County Supervisors are freezing their own wages while approving at least a 5% increase for all other county employees.
Chairman Doug Sorensen says Board of Supervisors are declining the five percent increase recommended by the compensation board for them. “We are just going to freeze ours this year. It’s not a huge amount of money. It maybe amounts to $1,500 or so per Supervisor. So a grand total of less than $5,000 for the budget. For optics when we are having increases across the board and the tax payers are paying more money and the fact that our Supervisor wages look very favorable compared to surrounding counties we decided to forego our raise.”
The rest of the county employees will see increases in their pay. “It’s the biggest increase we’ve had in Audubon County, but surrounding counties are going up in many cases by a lot more than that. The compensation board gave all of the elected officials a bump to start with except for the Supervisors and the County Attorney. Other positions got a bump prior to getting a five percent raise. Of course that affects not just them, but also their deputies. The Sheriff’s Department is getting a six percent boost. The dispatchers are getting a lot more than that, but we were way behind our surrounding counties for dispatchers. Secondary Roads are getting a six percent bump.”
The Audubon County Airport Authority gave their report to the Board of Supervisors. “Funding wise they are doing very well. The revenues are solid at the airport. He thought their debts would be paid off in three and a half years and hoped at that time they would no longer need any county or city money for the airport.” Sorensen says, “At this point it looks very good.”
Sorensen says the airport commission is made up of seven members, but they would like to look into lowering that number to make sure they always have a quorum at their meetings.
