Two of the biggest impacts that the proposed budget for Halifax County may have in the upcoming fiscal year pertain to salaries and recreation, County Manager Dia Denton told commissioners Monday night.

Salaries

The proposed $57,940,314 financial plan implements a salary study recommended by the Piedmont Triad Regional Council.

That study was based on position description questionnaires completed by all employees, interviews with employees and market data.

“Every county salary was increased,” Denton told the board. “Some did increase more than others. This was not a surprise to us. We saw significant increases for positions like animal control officers and custodians. We have known for a very long time that they were severely underpaid and the average increases for those positions are between 20 and 34 percent.”

One internal change staff made with the blessings of the board is that starting July 1, if things move forward in the budget process, is the implementation of a minimum county salary for which any position will be $30,000 a year. “We’re really proud of this,” the county manager said. “No county position will make less than $15 an hour and in the words of the assistant county manager, ‘It is life-changing for a lot of our lower paid employees’ and this is very impactful.”

Two prior actions of the board have made implementation of the study workable and affordable, Denton said.

One is what the county likes to call the 2021 Rives Manning plan which was to increase salaries of the sheriff’s office and the detention center. “Those increases went up 20 to 25 percent on average.”

In the current year budget, Denton told the board, “You all were gracious to allow us to do an 8 percent cost of living across the board.”

The cost of implementation including the fringes is estimated around $1.9 million.

Recreation

The second, which pertains to recreation, is what Denton described as a high impact solution. 

“You all have heard from the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board,” she said. “They’ve always wanted a recreation director. It’s always been kind of their number one priority.”

In working with cooperative extension and N.C. State University through their 4-H position, the county has been able to reclass a 4-H assistant position to a full 4-H agent and dedicate that position to recreation programming. “What that ideally would be like is you would have someone dedicated to the camp piece and you would have another person dedicated to programming beyond camp,” Denton said. “We think it satisfies a piece that the parks and rec board has wanted. We think we can make this work. That comes along with assets we already have and then improving on those assets in the future. It’s designed to assist programming in the entire county.”