Charged with the lofty task of establishing a “living wage” for the poorest of County employees, the Board of Supervisors (www.albemarle.org) met with the County School Board (www.K12.albemarle.org/board) February 14 to review the findings of a joint board committee. Comprising two supervisors and two School Board members, the committee presented two options for an hourly living wage: $9.75 and $11.07. The former figure was advocated last October as a possible hourly wage, while $11.07 was the number the joint committee returned, based on an average of two different standards and adjusted for a 3 percent annual increase. The County’s current minimum wage is $8.81 an hour, scheduled to increase to $9.10.
 Ken Boyd, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, couldn’t see how an increase in the minimum wage—either to $9.75 or $11.07 an hour—could be funded. |
“The bottom line is that it costs money to do this,” said Supervisor David Slutzky, before giving way to the three other committee members—all of whom identified deep divides. Brian Wheeler, School Board member, conceded that the current budget could not support $11.07 but advocated phasing in that rate.
Supervisor David Wyant was vexed about the rate of “salary decompression” that his committee recommended—meaning how wages stepped up with time on the job. Without it, the pay rate for experienced employees would be near or equal to the pay rate for newly hired employees in the same position. But the committee recommended full decompression, significantly driving up expected costs. When $9.75 an hour was bandied about last fall, yearly costs to the County were estimated at $87,000. Now the two boards were staring at a chart that estimated the yearly costs at around $900,000 annually, a daunting figure for a County besieged by demands for tax relief following rising property assessments.
“You all control the purse strings and if you all would like to provide us with the money so that we can in fact fund the living wage and fund the core instructional needs of our school system, then I would be more than happy to support it,” School Board member Diantha McKeel told the supervisors, summing up a general frustration.
“I don’t see how we can fund this,” Supervisor Ken Boyd said, sealing the living wage’s fate, at least for now.
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