The number of people employed by Guilford County government has ballooned in recent years, but top county administrators want to add many more and, if recent years are any indication, the county commissioners are going to grant their wish.
The number of new county employee positions to be added will be an important part of the discussions in the coming four months as the board puts together a 2024-2025 fiscal year budget that it plans to adopt in June.
Budget time is traditionally when most new county positions are added.
Guilford County currently has 2,930 full-time employee positions, which may sound like a lot. However, Guilford County Manager Mike Halford has been arguing ever since he became manager three years ago that the county needs many more employees.
A decade ago, the manager would need to beg and plead with the commissioners to add, say, three new Emergency Medical Services workers. However, this current board, just to name a couple of instances, added three public relations positions in one month, and added five positions to the Minority and Women Business Enterprise Department in one night – and both those moves were in the middle of the budget year.
Halford’s argument is this: When you look at the 25 largest counties in the state, Guilford County only has 5.3 full time positions per 1,000 residents, which is way fewer than most other counties in North Carolina.
Guilford County has fewer employees per 1,000 residents than almost every other county in that group of 25. Only Wake County, with Raleigh as the county seat, and Johnston County, where the county seat is Smithfield, have fewer employee positions per capita. For Wake, there are 4.1 employees per 1,000 when all the full-time positions are filled, whereas Johnston County has five employees by that same metric.
Davidson and Mecklenburg counties each have 5.5 positions per 1,000 residents.
The counties in the group with the most positions per resident are Brunswick County and New Hanover County, which have 8.5 and 8.6 respectively.
In fact, if one looks at all 100 counties, the average is 9.1 full-time employees per 1000 residents when all positions are filled.
Halford has stated several times in work sessions that his goal is to get Guilford County much closer to the state average and he is likely to get his wish – just as he has been getting all along. While traditional genie’s only grant three wishes, it is clear that current Guilford County Board of Commissioners has an infinite amount it is willing to grant.
Didn’t even want to ride it. 113 vacancies at your local Sheriff’s Office. All this means they have more money then they thought. Here’s an Idea a refund would help pay the taxes everyone still owes from. ast year. Remember how you vote each time your wallet opens.
Yes, we need more DIE hires that will no doubt be used to shuffle papers and come up with innovative ways to spend the taxpayers’ dollars.
Let the EDI times roll.
We need a more responsible County Manager and a more responsible City Manager. Spending our tax money is too easy for them!
Now that you have posted the per 1,000 numbers let’s see the salaries and fringe benefits too.
Why were skips new hires for the racist mwbe department added months after the budget blacks be black and can’t do any wrong but they sure as he$$ can be RACIST and skip is all about reparations
You would assume that the larger counties would have more efficiency due to scale and therefore it makes since that Guilford County, as the third largest county in the state, would have a much lower per capita rate than smaller counties. A better measure would staffing per capita of counties of similar size (including nearby states).
The County is growing in population. There is a need for more employees in areas like emergency services, animal control, social services, and data processing, all the areas people complain that they don’t get prompt responses when they call for information or help. The issue is that much of this could be done by better use of current budget resources which is not something the County is good at, as many of us are aware. The fact that most new hires recently have been new administrative positions proves this. That will not change unless there is a huge change in the Commissioners who are chosen by the voters, which is quite unlikely.
People have the power to change this if they vote differently.
EDIots or as the CIA used to say KITDFOHS
Yet another “duh” moment. Feathering the nest.
On another note, I just read that Guilford County has trouble retaining and attracting teachers. Huduthunkint?
Guilford County does not need more administrative employees. What we do need is more sworn sheriff’s deputies to fill the vacant positions. Greensboro loses officers to higher paying counties at all levels. The solution is to raise the pay of all deputies and officers to
attract and maintain all approved positions. The salary system also needs to be updated and corrected for fairness of rank and time of service.