FEBRUARY 22, 2012 - INTER-COUNTY LEADER - NEWS SECTION - A - PAGE 3
Paying county employees under new rules
BRIEFLY
ST. CROIX FALLS - Join naturalist Julie Fox at 10 a.m. on Thursdays through March at the Ice Age Center at Wisconsin Interstate Park for a story and activity chosen especially for preschoolers and their parents. Please bring clothing for outdoor play, weather permitting. Interstate Park is located in St. Croix Falls, on Hwy. 35 just a halfmile south of Hwy. 8. Nature story time is free of charge, but a state park sticker is required to enter the park. For more information call Fox at 715-483-3747. - submitted ••• BURNETT/POLK COUNTIES The St. Croix Valley Health Care Foundation now has applications available for three types of scholarships: one for high school seniors, post high school and nontraditional (adult returning to school) students pursuing a degree in a health-care field. For many years, the foundation has provided scholarship assistance of varying amounts to individuals from area communities served by the medical center and children of medical center employees who are furthering their education and who have been accepted to an accredited program of training for health-care occupations. Each year, a percentage of foundation funds, including contributions, are earmarked for this scholarship award program. Many past scholarship recipients now are putting their education and experience to work in this region and several are SCRMC employees. To request an application, please contact Laurie Nelson, foundation assistant, 715483-0587, or Sarah Shaw, education specialist at St. Croix Regional Medical Center, 715-483-0431. You may also stop by the medical center and request a foundation scholarship application or request a copy by e-mail at foundation@scrmc.org and put “college scholarship application” in the subject line. The deadline for application submissions is April 1. Awardees will be selected and notified by the end of May. - submitted ••• TOWN OF BONE LAKE - The annual Mardi Gras Festival will be held this Saturday, Feb. 25, at Wilkin’s Resort on Bone Lake, from 6 to 8 p.m. The event, which raises funds for Bone Lake Youth’s trip to New Orleans in July, features a spaghetti dinner, a jazz band, a fortune teller and Bingo. - with submitted information ••• BALSAM LAKE - The Unity Eagles Booster Club will hold its monthly meeting on Wed., Feb. 29, at 6:30 p.m. - submitted
Correction
The phone number listed in last week’s story Day Friends open in Balsam Lake, about a program for individuals with dementia or similar needs, was wrong. It should be 715-485-8762.
What is best for counties and employees by Gregg Westigard Leader staff writer NORTHWEST WISCONSIN – If county government were a company, it would be an unusual business. Counties are a collection of many departments unconnected with each other that provide services to the public. There are departments for aging residents, child protection, child support, courts, deaths, elections, forests, highways, jails, lake protection, land use, law enforcement, marriage licenses, public health, recycling, tax collection, veterans and zoning. Polk County even operates a nursing home and a lime quarry. The departments are overseen by a small layer of administrative employees who oversee the hiring, finances, work spaces and technology. This amounts to a lot of employees (over 400 for Polk County) with a lot of specialized skills. Counties employ mental health social workers, snowplow drivers, nurses, police officers, biologists, lawyers, computer technicians, librarians, surveyors and medical examiners who determine the cause of deaths. Most county departments have many employees with special skills with a very small supervisory or administrative layer above them and very little room for upward mobility on the job. Last year, the Wisconsin governor and Legislature changed the rules on how all these employees are paid and the policies they work under. Gone are union contracts (except for some employees in the sheriff’s department) with pay schedules and work rules. The counties now decide what to pay people and what rules they will work under. Polk County’s Administrator Dana Frey says how governments now operate is a wide-open issue, with everything on the
table. He said these are issues that all governments are struggling with. Counties, and all governments, need to look at four factors when dealing with employee compensation, Frey told the Polk County Personnel Committee on Thursday, Feb. 9. Those are: what is best for the county, what is best for the employees, fairness and simplicity. County board member Ken Sample added that fairness and retention are paramount. All governments are now establishing new work policies while keeping operations going. “We are trying to keep the wheels on the truck,” Frey said.
Options for pay “The goal of an employee compensation plan is to improve organizational performance,” Frey said. He added that this would include attracting and retaining good employees and increasing employee satisfaction. Part of the challenge is that counties have such a range of employees. Some employees are at the top of their career and at the peak of their (former) pay scale. They may be nearing retirement. Others are just starting their careers. There are specialists who are hired at their peak skill and others who are looking for career advancement. With a small layer of management / administrative positions in many departments, career advancement may mean moving to another (larger) county rather than moving up in their present county. A county compensation plan involves keeping the good senior employee satisfied and offering enough compensation to retain the rising younger employee. Frey laid out three basic options for employee compensation and said each have serious flaws. The options are: pay everyone in the same job the same rate, pay based on seniority and pay based on performance. Frey made comments on each. Option 1, pay everyone the same, is sim-
ple and perceived as fair. But it does not encourage people to do more, does not reflect relative value to the organization and does nothing to improve organizational performance. Option 2, base salary on seniority, links longevity with value to the organization, is simple and perceived as fair, and encourages retention. But it does not improve individual performance or reflect relative value of the employee or directly improve organizational performance. Option 3, pay for performance, links pay with past individual results, rewards those perceived as better performers and appears to motivate individual performance. But evidence shows that it can easily reduce organizational performance. Frey went on in his presentation to list some of the reasons pay for performance does not work. Among the reasons is that the system is often not based on merit and can be biased. The pay increase government can make might not be enough to motivate employees. Finally, Frey said pay for performance may make 10 percent happy and upset the other 90 percent. With all that, Frey answered the question, “So now, what?” by saying the county needs to move slowly and carefully. He pointed out three county-specific issues with performance pay. First, how to reward performance when everyone knows everyone else’s salary. Second, when and how to reward performance for those at the top of their pay grid. And lastly, how to pay more for exceptional performers when much of the public thinks most government employees are already overpaid. The compensation subject will continue at the counties and other levels of government. Among the issues are what level of benefits the state government will allow and the competition from the private sector for some job skills if the economy recovers. The issues have been laid out by Frey.
Three airlifted following head-on crash SPOONER - Three people were airlifted for medical treatment following a head-on collision Sunday, Feb. 19, on Hwy. 70, approximately a half mile west of Tower Hill Road in the Town of Evergreen. According to a police report, Robert A. Hester, 85, and his wife Diane K. Hester, 77, of Hayward, were driving east on 70 when their vehicle drifted across the centerline
into the path of oncoming traffic and collided with a car driven by Iona J. Plath, 83, of Spooner. Washburn County Sheriff’s deputies, along with personnel from the Spooner Fire Department and Spooner North Ambulance arrived on the scene to find people trapped in their vehicles. The Hesters were in a 2011 Subaru station wagon, and Plath was driv-
ing a 2008 Chevrolet Impala. All three were taken to the Spooner hospital emergency room and later airlifted to other medical facilities. The accident occurred at approximately 11:53 a.m. - with information from the Washburn County Sheriff’s Dept.
BL man among five indicted for distributing meth on Iron Range MINNEAPOLIS—A Balsam Lake man is among four men and one woman indicted in federal court, charged with distributing methamphetamine in northern Minnesota. Antonio Chavez Aguirre Jr., 29, is charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine. He is also charged with one count of possession with intent to distribute 50 or more grams of methamphetamine. Others charged with conspiracy to distribute are David Michael Cook, 38, and Trisha
Nicole Cullen, 28, both of Hibbing, Minn.; David Richard DeKing, 54, of Carlton, Minn.; and Shad Daniel O’Neil, 33, of Grand Rapids, Minn. Cook and DeKing also face charges of possession with intent to distribute 50 or more grams. Cullen and O’Neil were charged with one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine; and O’Neil was charged with one count of being a felon in possession of firearms.
The indictment was unsealed Friday, Feb. 17, following the defendants initial appearances in federal court. This case is the result of an investigation by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the Boundary Waters Drug Task Force and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas M. Hollenhorst. - Gary King with information from U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Minnesota
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Town board opposing proposed Hwy. 8 expressway plans ST. CROIX FALLS – The town board of the Town of St. Croix Falls is opposing the completion of Tier II of the Department of Transportation’s study of Hwy. 8 in Polk County specifically within the town in the area around the intersection of Hwys. 8 and 35. Based on a 1999-2001 state legislative mandate, the DOT began a threetiered process that addressed designing what would be required for Hwy. 8 to become a four-lane expressway including an interchange at Hwys. 8 and 35 appropriate to such an expressway which would join the expressway at Hwy. 35 to the town’s commercial district. In recent meetings with the town board, DOT has stated that their department must meet this mandate and plans to have the Tier II report ready to forward to the state Assembly in 2012. The reason for the opposition of the town board and town residents with
properties and businesses operating on Hwy. 8 is essentially that all designs offered by DOT for the portion of Hwy. 8 within their town and the interchange at Hwys. 8 and 35N require the closing of the access that town businesses have to Hwy. 8. Almost the entire town’s commercial area is affected including 15 small businesses. Without direct on-and-off access to Hwy. 8, these businesses will suffer serious loss of customers and dollars. While they have been told repeatedly that actual road construction may not occur for 15 to 20 years (if ever), as soon as a design for the intersection at Hwys. 8 and 35N is finalized, the shadow of the future construction and the required future mapping and marking of deeds will immediately affect property values for those wishing to sell and will affect the overall development (expansion and new) of the town’s commercial district. The board is acting to protect the viability of the town’s com-
mercial district and its tax base and is, therefore, asking that necessary action be taken so that the completion of this Tier II design in the town does not occur. As well as the specific and serious concerns the board has for the town of St Croix Falls, looking into the details of this issue, has raised a broader concern about the need for this study. The legislative action initiating this study occurred in 19992000. The DOT tiered study process began in 2003. Since that time, many factors have changed that call the need for this study to continue in the area into question. Among those factors are the state of the economy, the decreasing traffic counts in the designated location, the construction of a four-lane expressway, the Hwy. 64 corridor, 20 miles south of Hwy. 8 and the impending impact of a Stillwater bridge. The town board will continue to work with their Assembly representatives to stop the DOT’s Tier II design. The town
board will also continue to work with DOT to develop plans for the intersection of Hwy. 8 and 35N that will meet the current needs for traffic flow and safety at that intersection. Such options may include signalization or a roundabout. Public input will be sought as these discussions on that intersection progress. - submitted
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