If county government salaries are "too low compared with comparable local governments," the answer is easy, right? Just raise those salaries, and be quick about it. But not all county departments are equal -- some have higher-than-average salaries, some lower. It makes sense to target raises where there is a specific problem:
The single best measure of job satisfaction must be whether people stick with their jobs or resign to take other positions. Most county departments are doing a good job of retaining employees.
The assessor's office reports an average turnover rate of 2 percent per year. That wasn't a lone exception, either. There is a 3 percent turnover rate in the auditor's office and the highway department, for example.
Overall, Allen County has a 9.5 percent annual turnover rate. There's the first cue for further action: In departments where turnover is far below the county's average, there's no rush to reinvent the system of employee compensation.
And what if "comparable local governments" include Fort Wayne, which has some of the highest salaries in the state, as Kevin Leininger points out?
Fort Wayne isn't Indiana's biggest city, but you'd never know it from the salaries paid to some of its officials and employees.
Mayor Graham Richard's annual base salary is tops in the state and nearly $10,000 more than Bart Peterson earns as mayor of Indianapolis, which has four times the population of Fort Wayne. And Richard's not unique. According to a survey by the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, Fort Wayne's police chief, parks director and City Council members all make more than their counterparts in other Hoosier cities.
