Guilford County Manager Mike Halford worked for a county manager for years – as a budget director – so he knows what it’s like not to be on the top rung of county staff.
Apparently, he hasn’t forgotten because these days Halford is pleading for new county staff perks just about every time he speaks to the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. Right now, the goal is to get the salaries of all Guilford County employees to the middle of the pack – the “50th percentile.”
A salary study initiated by the county years ago found that pay for Guilford County employees was significantly lower than the halfway mark for “similarly situated” counties – making it hard for the county to complete for the top employees who have other job options such as Wake County or Mecklenburg County.
Halford has also argued many times that Guilford County employees have workloads that exceed those in other counties because of a low number of employees compared to the number of county residents.
Since Halford became county manager in January 2021, he has made it a quest to raise the pay and brighten the working conditions of the county’s employees.
He recently convinced the Board of Commissioners to approve an across the board 5 percent pay raise for county staff – including already extremely well paid directors – and he has included $15 million in the 2022-2023 manager’s budget proposal to bring salaries up higher.
That budget also includes additional money for merit pay for individual raises for the top-performing employees.
Even with those bumps, Halford has been continually reminding the county commissioners that he will ask for more salary increases in future years.
The manager has made it clear that he doesn’t see the 50th percentile as a reasonable goal for a county the size and importance of Guilford County – the third largest county in the state.
Some of the questions surrounding employee pay will be known very soon when the Guilford County Board of Commissioners adopts a budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Oh, isn’t this just so rich? First of all the Guilford County Public Sector commissions a study – paid for with your tax Dollars – to examine whether their employees are “underpaid” by other standards – normally other public sector employees in other cities or states.
Guess what!
The study determines that the folk who paid for the study are indeed underpaid. Who’d have thunk?
They duly trot out this taxpayer funded pretext and excuse for them to receive more money – as a reason why they should get more money.
THE PARASITIC SECTOR DISGUSTS ME, AND IS THE EMBODIMENT OF GREED.
Lol, so let’s cancel police, fire, tax collection services, city water and sewer services (you can just poop in your backyard), inspections (so you can get ripped off by shoddy builders etc…), no need for public education (cuz for profit school promise to put your kid before $), no need for public records (we can just trust who owns what cuz they say so)…..Ooooo can cancel any assistance programs so more families live on the street….Oooo, we cancel any public health so the older members of our community can die earlier before they become MORE of a burden……
Are public services ideal from a performance perspective? Nope. But comp is one of the many issues with public services that leads to under performance. Promotion practices is another. But at least this fixes one of problems….if you want talent who will perform their job efficiently and effectively, you have to have competitive comp plans…otherwise you get what you pay for.
Not complicated.
I didn’t say the Public/Parasitic Sector should be abolished, I said it’s greedy.
Please try to think more clearly.
So you keep your parasites? Odd but you be you.
And no one gets into public sector work for the money that I ever met. With very few exceptions at the top level, most can earn far more working for private companies. So where do you get the idea that Marge working as a clerk in the records office is greedy?
Don’t confuse the greed of public officials with public servants.
I don’t know who Marge is, but I do know that the Public Sector is completely insulated from economic reality, and, as a consequence, they are doing very well, even as the Private Sector struggles.
That’s because they don’t earn their money in the marketplace, they get it from a system of universal extortion called taxation.
Right, Chrissy?
Chris having worked in that sector for a number of years there are many who just do the bear minimum to get by no initiative to do better or to get ahead and more than few would say “ if they paid me more I’d do more “ sorry but that’s not the way it works in the private sector trying to make a profit or in today’s business environment just keep your head above water
The amount of cash around is staggering. You can double everyone’s pay easily, depending on how much you can finesse by the taxpayer.
Money is NOT the problem at Guilford County. Keep looking.
The entire apparatus of government, and the whole Parasitic Sector are awash with money. This while real people with real jobs in the Productive Sector are struggling with rent, gasoline, taxes, food, and other essentials – just to stay alive.
It’s obscene.
There you go again? So police, fire, tax services, public health professionals, etc… don’t have real jobs? You say you don’t want them abolished but then you rant about greed and not real jobs etc.. Make up you mind.
Do you deny that the Public Sector is swimming in money? And that their greed is so all consuming that they are even still jacking up our taxes?
Any person hired for Government positions should be experienced well enough to make good decisions about employee salaries without having to hire outside persons to determine if salaries are too low. Stop hiring employees who are NOT qualified for the jobs.
You’re right Martin – obviously. But they conduct these surveys because they know it looks bad when they unilaterally award themselves more money. This way it’s a C.Y.A. process that nevertheless provides them with a fig leaf so they can claim legitimacy for their greed. And WE paid for it, so they really don’t care.
It is not at all easy to have a clear view of compensation trends in any industry. Most private companies do their best to keep comp level secret even within their own organizations. Collection and analysis of industry / role / regional specific compensation data is expensive and very specialized.
It is easy to know how much a specific person will pay for as it is individually negotiated but you have little real insight to how they aligns to broader industry perspective.
Oh dear, that’s not a very good response, Chris.
Blah, blah, blah….
It’s vacuous and jejune even by your standards.
Remember – these oh so underpaid public servants all kept their jobs and full paychecks, in addition to their righteous benefits, during the scamdemic, while thousands of tax-paying citizens who pay their salaries were put out of work, many being forced onto government assistance, as their jobs and places of business were deemed “non-essential”.
No pay raises for anyone in government until they undo the mess they created over two years ago!
yes, luckily we did keep our jobs so we were able to provide covid testing, covid vaccines for our community as well as operating the systems that provide the government assistance
Vote Libertarian and implement the Fair Tax Plan.
Problems eventually solved & great, great grandchildren get to live in their own houses rather than public housing. Keep voting for socialists & we’ll all be broke & living off the teat.