The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted to give itself a 2.2-percent pay raise Tuesday, and the increase will go into effect in 2018.
North County Supervisor Peter Adam was the lone dissenter in the 4-1 decision that will see the board’s paychecks jump by $72.24 every two weeks.
The board’s biweekly salaries will increase from $3,283.82 to $3,356.08, with their annual salaries jumping from the current $78,811.68 to $80,545.92.
Adam said he’s a believer is basing pay raises on job performance, and he doesn’t feel the board is performing its duties adequately.
“I think we are doing a crappy job because we have got too much unfunded liability,” Adam said. “We’ve got too much deferred maintenance; we don’t have enough revenue generation going on and we spend too much.”
Adam supported a suggested 3.7-percent increase to county contributions to health insurance for those supervisors enrolled in and receiving county-sponsored health insurance, just not the proposed pay hike.
The increase for health insurance costs will have supervisors seeing their contributions jump from $370.48 twice monthly to $381.63.
As part of an ordinance regulating pay increases for the board, the raise is consistent with the October 2016 annual indices of the Consumer Price Index – Urban for the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County area. The ordinance ties board pay increases to the CPI, with a minimum increase of 0 percent to a maximum of 3 percent.
Santa Barbara County does not have a CPI and the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County area is the closest one that does, which is why numbers for its CPI are linked to the board’s raises, according to county staff.
With Tuesday’s action, the total increase to salaries and benefits for the five supervisors will be less than $10,000 annually. The general fund cost is included in the county’s recommended budget for the 2017-18 fiscal year, which started July 1.
The supervisors took a 1.4-percent pay increase in fiscal year 2015-16 and did not approve a proposed 1-percent pay hike last fiscal year.
Supervisors give OK to sheriff to begin amending outside contracts
The Sheriff’s Department contracts with several agencies to provide law enforcement services, and the Board of Supervisors gave the OK Tuesday to “renegotiate draft replacement contracts and/or provide notification of termination, if necessary, with respect to existing law enforcement services contracts.”
The department currently contracts with more than 50 outside agencies, including the cities of Goleta, Carpinteria, Solvang, Buellton, Santa Barbara (for Old Spanish Days), County Parks (special events), Los Padres Forest Service, UCSB and more, but doesn’t fully recover costs, said Undersheriff Bernard Melekian.
Melekian told the supervisors most of the contracts were written 25 years ago and not “with the idea of doing full-cost recovery,” which is the direction the department is moving toward.
He said the department is currently evaluating how many deputies it takes to staff the field and what is required to support those officers, which, in turn, will be used to negotiate the contracts that are now in place.
“It’s not our intent to stop service for any of current contractees,” Melekian said, noting the department can’t negotiate without providing notices to those it contracts with and that the action had to first be approved by the supervisors. “This is simply a bureaucratic exercise.”
Melekian also told the supervisors once notices have been served, plans of action developed and costs that can be recovered through amending contracts, the department will come back to the board for approval.
“We think we will be a benefit to our customers … and a benefit to the county because we’ll be doing full-cost recovery,” Melekian said.
The 50-plus contracts generate $16.5 million for county coffers annually.
During his presentation, Melekian also noted the department’s fairly recent contract with the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Tribe of Indians for law enforcement services in the Santa Ynez Valley won’t be open for negotiations as “it’s too new, and appropriate.”
— Noozhawk contributing writer April Charlton can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkSociety, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Become a fan of Noozhawk on Facebook.
