Dale $13.3 million budget includes benefit increase

More funding towards employee health benefits is included in the $13.3 million budget passed by the Dale County Commission Sept. 24.

The budget also includes a 1 percent cost of living pay raise for employees.

This is the seventh year in a row the budget is balanced “in the black” and employees have received raises, Dale County Commission Chairman Mark Blankenship said.

How to pass a balanced budget and still give the county employees raises was a challenge that required some pencil sharpening during the several meetings in which the commissioners discussed the budget and Blankenship credits County Administrator Cheryl Ganey and the department heads for helping that happen. “The fact that we are able to again pass a balanced budget that includes pay raises for employees and this year increase employee health insurance benefits is a credit to the cooperative efforts of the department heads working hand in hand with us to make it happen,” he said.

The county will now pay 75 percent of family health care coverage, up from 55 percent currently paid, Blankenship explained. An employee who currently pays $594 a month for family coverage will pay $274. There is a health insurance cost increase in January 2020 causing that amount to raise to $287.75 per month.

The county will pay 90 percent of the health insurance cost for each employee covered. “We have made changes to health coverage which gets us competitive with the other cities around us.”

The commission also reclassified and raised the pay scale for some positions, primarily in the sheriff’s department.

Dale County Engineer Derek Brewer thanked the commission for their efforts in ensuring that an employee pay raise was included in the budget. Dale County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Mason Bynum echoed that statement. “Thank you to everyone who worked together over the last several months crunching numbers and spending time in meetings to make this possible,” he said.

“Today the Dale County Commission took a huge step in the right direction by voting to increase pay for deputies, re-evaluate and adjust current job classifications and they made family coverage insurance affordable for all county employees,” Bynum said. “These changes will make us competitive and help tremendously in our recruitment of prospective employees and retention of current employees.

“In addition to these changes the commission, in a joint partnership with the Dale County Board of Education, voted to add an additional school resource officer to serve in our county schools,” Bynum added. “That brings us up to four SROs.”

The next meeting of the Dale County Commission is Tuesday, Oct. 8, in the Dale County Government Building in Ozark. A work session begins at 10 a.m. and is followed immediately by a voting meeting. Both meetings are open to the public.