"The Albemarle Board of Supervisors and School Board may decide today on a “living wage” figure for certain county employees - such as police officers, bus drivers, custodians and secretaries - that would increase their pay and add significant costs to both budgets.

There are two figures that will frame the discussion. One is $9.75 per hour, a number the two boards set at a meeting in October that is used by Charlottesville. The other is $11.07, a figure reached by a joint committee’s research on cost of living studies. Currently, the lowest county wage is $8.84 an hour.

“I am absolutely committed to the appropriateness of funding the $11.07 rate,” said Supervisor David L. Slutzky, a member of the joint committee. “I think it’s disgraceful for the county to be paying its citizens to be in poverty. On the one hand, it’s expensive. On the other hand, there’s this moral imperative. Now that we have to get our checkbooks out we’ll see if our resolve is still there.”

David C. Wyant, a supervisor on the joint committee, thinks $11.07 is too high because the number was reached using the wrong criteria.

“I don’t feel like we did it,” Wyant said, assessing the committee’s work.

“Why would you work to get a diploma when you can start out at $11.07 with the county?”

School Board member Brian Wheeler, also on the committee, said that because the $9.75 “living wage” impact on the school division’s budget is more than was anticipated, he feels that implementing a “living wage” in phases, starting at $9.75 an hour, would be most practical.

“It’s an issue that should be revisited every year,” Wheeler said.

The county’s “living wage” discussion is a move away from its market-based method in structuring its salary scale.

“It’s a different way of looking at compensation,” School Board member Diantha McKeel said. “The ‘living wage’ affects not just folks who need to be moved to a living wage. It affects everyone up the line.”

Supervisor Dennis S. Rooker is hesitant about establishing a minimum salary not based on the 17 markets in Virginia that the county uses to create a scale.“I’m somewhat concerned about going down the road of establishing pay based on a political process rather than an objective process,” Rooker said.

The salary scale would need to be revised to prevent a situation where a new employee would make as much as someone who has been working for five years, called compression.

“As the superintendent has said, philosophically and ethically, we support the concept of having a ‘living wage’ for all employees,” said School Board Chairwoman Sue Friedman. “But we have to look at the effects of compression and what it will look like five years from now.”

A “living wage” salary jump would most significantly impact the county school division. The schools employ 69 percent of the 1,751 classified county workers. A $9.75-an-hour “living wage” would add more than $900,000 to the school division’s proposed budget for next fiscal year. Local government’s budget would increase by about $250,000.

Superintendent Pamela Moran allocated in her initial budget proposal for next fiscal year more than $700,000 to set a “living wage.” The School Board, however, decided at a meeting last week to not include that amount in the school budget, agreeing it was an issue the Board of Supervisors had not yet settled.

Wyant questioned why the School Board has not addressed the “living wage” issue before the Board of Supervisors started discussing it last year.

“Why hasn’t the school system addressed this before it came to us as a board?” he asked. “They’re the ones with the majority of the people that don’t come up to the ‘living wage’ standard now.”

The two boards may set a “living wage” figure at 3:30 p.m. today in Room 235 of the Albemarle County Office Building." (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, February 14, 2007)