By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

County commissioners spent a lot of time discussing a raises and bonuses for county employees and finally came to a decision after the first two votes ended in ties.

County commissioner Randy Dallke, who missed the early part of Monday’s commission meeting because he had a work-related meeting to attend, had to cast a tiebreaker vote after he came in.

Employees will get a 1% raise and a $150 bonus after a split vote with Dallke, commissioner Dave Crofoot, and commission chairman Kent Becker in favor and commissioners Jonah Gehring and Dianne Novak opposed.

Becker brought up giving cost of living raises or an annual bonus because employees did not get one last year.

Novak said she is opposed to giving percentage raises because employees at the upper end of the county pay scale get more money than employees at the lower end of the pay scale. She wanted a raise to be more even.

“I’m going to suggest 50 cents an hour increase,” Novak said.

She added that she would rather see one raise instead of a cost of living increase, a merit raise, and an anniversary raise.

The prospect of giving each department an increase and letting the department heads determine how much to give each employee was also discussed, but county clerk Tina Spencer said she was not comfortable with that because it creates a situation that makes it easy for department heads to discriminate.

Becker originally moved to give employees both a 1% raise and a $150 bonus. Crofoot voted in favor and Gehring and Novak voted against.

The second vote was on a motion by Gehring to give employees a $150 bonus.

That vote was Gehring and Novak in favor and Becker and Crofoot opposed.