Commissioners approve FOP agreement for sheriff’s office; set date for 2013 budget hearing

By Randa Wagner -

Mor­row County Com­mis­sion­ers have set their date for a pub­lic hear­ing on Feb. 13, 2013 at 11 a.m. for the pur­pose of County Bud­get Appro­pri­a­tions for 2013. The res­i­dents of Mor­row County are invited to attend the hear­ing and/or pro­vide writ­ten or oral com­ments or ques­tions con­cern­ing the entire bud­get for 2013. The hear­ing will take place in the Mor­row County Com­mis­sion­ers’ Office, 80 North Wal­nut Street, Mt. Gilead.

A labor agree­ment between the Mor­row County Sher­iff and the Fra­ter­nal Order of Police/Ohio Labor Coun­cil was reached, and com­mis­sion­ers approved and rat­i­fied the con­tract at their Jan. 23 meet­ing. A 2% wage increase was agreed on.

This wage increase set­tles the wage reopener iden­ti­fied in Sec­tion 36.1 (D) for the third year of the cur­rent agree­ment. Employ­ees will nor­mally be hired at Step A of the wage scale. Employ­ees will advance to the next step of the wage scale the first full pay after their anniver­sary date each year until they reach Step E of the scale. All employ­ees must work a year in the new step of the wage scale before advanc­ing to the next step. Employ­ees who receive a pro­mo­tion will advance to the new range, in the step which allows increase.

Each full-time bar­gain­ing unit employee shall receive longevity pay added to their base rate of pay upon the com­ple­tion of the required years of employ­ment with the Mor­row County Sheriff’s office as follows:

After six years’ ser­vice $0.25 per hour

After twelve years’ ser­vice $0.50 per hour

After eigh­teen years’ ser­vice $0.75 per hour

After twenty-three years’ ser­vice $1.00 per hour

Detec­tives will receive $0.75 per hour for all hours worked to com­pen­sate for chang­ing sched­ules and callouts.

Com­mis­sioner Tom Harden explained that three years ago, the com­mis­sion­ers signed an agree­ment with the union to allow for a 2 1/2% pay raise the first year; the sec­ond year there was no pay rise, and this year they agreed to rene­go­ti­ate wages and agreed to the 2% pay raise (total­li­ing 4 1/2% over 3 years). A new con­tract will be nego­ti­ated next year.

“From our stand­point, we’re going to do what we can to fund and sup­port our safety ser­vices,” Comms­sion­ers Tom Whis­ton said. “That, to me, is one of the inte­gral pur­poses we have as county commissioners.”

Harden noted a cost analy­sis was done on seven coun­ties sim­i­lar to Mor­row County in size and Mor­row County ranked in the bot­tom of that group for law enforce­ment pay schedule.

“Many of the offices in the cour­t­house have received 4 1/2% increases, and I’d hate to send the mes­sage that we think less of our law enforce­ment peo­ple than we do our pub­lic employ­ees,” said Com­mis­sioner Dick Miller. He said Mor­row County is the fourth low­est paid sheriff’s depart­ment in the state.

In other busi­ness the commissioners:

- Autho­rized the fil­ing of pro­pos­als with the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion by Mor­row County Trans­porta­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive. The pro­posal is for grants through the US DOT Fed­eral Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tion (FTA), as autho­rized under Fed­eral Tran­sit laws, as cod­i­fied, 49 USC Sec­tion 5310, Elderly indi­vid­u­als and indi­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties, Ohio’s spe­cial­ized trans­porta­tion pro­gram and exe­cut­ing a con­tract with the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion upon project approval.

Tim Maceyko, Mor­row County Trans­porta­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive Mobil­ity Man­ager, is autho­rized on behalf of the col­lab­o­ra­tive to file pro­pos­als to aid in the financ­ing of cap­i­tal assis­tance projects; grant agree­ments with the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion for aid in the financ­ing of cap­i­tal assis­tance projects; an assur­ance or any other doc­u­ment required by the U.S. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion effec­tu­at­ing the pur­poses of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; set forth affir­ma­tive dis­ad­van­tage busi­ness poli­cies in con­nec­tion to any pro­cure­ment made as part of the project; to fur­nish such addi­tional infor­ma­tion as the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion may require in con­nec­tion with the pro­posal for the pro­gram of projects sub­mit­ted to the Fed­eral Tran­sit Administration

- Bond was approved for Matthew Hintz, M. D., Mor­row County Coro­ner, in the amount of $5,000.00 with West­ern Surety Com­pany. Term begin­ning Jan­u­ary 7, 2013 and ends the first Mon­day in Jan­u­ary 2017.

- Accepted a pro­posal from Julian & Grube, Inc. to pre­pare a gaap (Gen­er­ally Accepted Account­ing Prac­tices) basis finan­cial state­ment for year 2012. The county is required to file its GAAP basis annual finan­cial report by May 31, 2013; and com­mis­sion­ers approved a three-year engage­ment for $15,500.00 to be billed one-third of the appro­pri­ate amount on Jan­u­ary 15, March 15, and upon report com­ple­tion each year. Julian & Grube has been serv­ing the county in this capac­ity for sev­eral years.

The com­mis­sion­ers approved pass­ing the 2013 Bud­get Appro­pri­a­tions, for all funds out­side the gen­eral fund only. The gen­eral fund appro­pri­a­tions will be final­ized before April 1, 2013. These are funds obtained from grants, fed­eral and state monies and fund­ing sources apart from the county’s gen­eral budget.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.