Sedgwick County budget plan calls for 8% pay raises; sets aside $1M for mental health

The Sedgwick County Commission is poised to give a pay bump to county employees and spend more money on behavioral health next year, according to a preliminary $521 million budget released this week.

But the county will be operating at a $2 million deficit in 2023 and will have to tap its “Rainy Day” fund to balance the budget. Projections show the county is likely to continue operating at a deficit for at least the next five years, the budget shows.

However, those figures can be a bit misleading, officials say, because $29 million of the county’s spending plan goes to contingency funds, which offer flexibility in spending but are not typically used unless something out of the ordinary happens.

The commission plans to approve at least an 8% raise for county employees — with even larger pay increases for workers in departments with severe staffing shortages.

The public will have about a month to weigh in on the budget, and changes are expected before it is approved.

County Manager Tom Stolz presented his recommended budget to the commission on Wednesday, after months of discussion with commissioners and department heads about how to best solve the county’s staffing crisis that has led to hundreds of vacant positions.

“We think it’s close,” Stolz said. “We don’t think it’s there. It’s time now for the commission to take this to their constituents.”

In response to a multi-year staffing study, the county is hoping to hire and keep additional employees by offering more competitive pay and an improved working environment, including added training for supervisors.

“(The budget) talks about compensation for employees and it talks about environmental working conditions for employees,” Stolz said. “Both are critical. And at least in the compensation world, we all know that it is a competitive market.”

“The final goal for the year, which the commission has made very clear, is the commitment to behavior health services in this community.”

Residents may speak to the budget at two public hearings: 6 p.m. on Aug. 3 and 9 a.m. on Aug. 24. The county is also accepting comments online until Aug. 23. (You may visit the county’s sedgwickcounty.org website to comment.) The adopted budget will be approved Aug. 24.

Commissioners signaled their approval of Stolz’s spending priorities on Wednesday. Commissioner Jim Howell voted against approving a higher spending limit than last year, saying the county should find efficiencies within its operations to keep spending flat.

The county did not raise its mill levy rate but revenues to the county have increased — along with property taxes for nearly 90% of homeowners in Sedgwick County — because property values have surged amid a hot housing market.

“At the end of the day, I just want to challenge us to find a way to share in this economy with the people we serve by finding efficiencies and finding ways to let them know that we feel their pain,” Howell said.

Commission Chairman David Dennis said raising the spending limit is likely necessary to ensure residents receive core government services, but it could be changed before the budget is approved.

“We’re about 200 (employees) short in Comcare, we’re down in corrections, we’re down in the jail,” Dennis said. “As a result, that’s causing some service problems for us to be able to provide the services that we need.”

Compensation

The 2023 budget includes multiple new approaches to compensation for employees, from “step plans” for EMS and Fire to market adjustments for other departments — such as lawyers in the Office of the District Attorney — that have significant vacancies.

“We have to be able to retain and recruit new employees here in Sedgwick County,” Dennis said. “With the 2% pay raise that we gave mid-year and in your budget you have an 8% pay raise going towards the future, hopefully that will help us do those very things in retaining the great workers we have now and recruiting new workers to fill the open positions.”

Commissioner Sarah Lopez said staff was the number one priority in this year’s budget and thanked Stolz for increasing wages for county employees.

“You’ve taken into account what we’ve said and really making our staff our number one priority this year, and compensation and making sure people feel valued for the work that they do for our county,” Lopez said. “It’s incredibly important work and everybody that works with our community is doing a service for our community, so they need to be compensated in a way that they feel valued.”

Comcare and corrections staff will receive a bump in pay from increased state funding. And the county is setting aside additional $1.5 million for additional overtime pay for firefighters.

The scales used to set pay ranges for specific county positions will increase by 7%.

“We have to move the scale every once in a while so that we don’t end up back in this situation in five or ten years again, where we have significantly lower compensation rates than competitors, both government and private,” Stolz said.

All employees will receive at least an 8% pay increase next year starting Jan. 1, which is slightly lower than the 9.1% inflation rate over the past year.

“Due to County management’s concerns that an increasingly tight labor market, limited pipelines for certain positions, and very high inflation will continue to create workforce challenges, the 2023 adjustments are just the next step in making sure the organization is able to recruit and retain employees,” the budget report says.

Stolz said if the budget is approved by the Commission, the county would commit to routinely increasing the pay scale for county employees to keep pace with the rising cost of living and wage increases in the private sector and other government agencies.

Mental health

Sedgwick County is placing $1 million into a mental health contingency fund to pay for future mental-health initiatives.

The money has not been earmarked for any specific project, but commissioners say it shows the county’s commitment to do something about the mounting mental health problems in the county.

“We put a $1 million mental health contingency in for 2023 for the commission to consider use of things to be identified when 2023 rolls around,” Stolz said.

The county has committed $33,000 to the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Coalition. It’s also adding $295,443 for contractual mental health services for juveniles at its corrections facilities.

To do so, the county is also cutting three full-time-equivalent positions for mental health services for juveniles, opting instead for an outsourced mental-health service model at its juvenile corrections facilities.