County jail staff could see pay increase

Use of ARPA funds will require county board to come up with future plans
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

Workers with the Shawano County Jail could see a significant pay hike in their future in the hopes of halting the high turnover at the facility, even though county officials see the action as a Band-Aid for solving a long-term issue.

The county’s public safety and executive committees met separately on July 22 and voted to recommend a $3 pay hike across the board for corrections officers, jail sergeants, cooks and other lower-echelon staffers, with the money expected to come from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. The county has received almost $4 million in ARPA funds this year and is expected to receive a similar amount in the future, and the jail pay is expected to cost the county over $750,000 in that time period.

However, that funding is only available to the county through the end of 2024, which is going to require a plan to figure out what to do in three years’ time. Counties are subject to spending caps by the state, so Shawano County cannot merely raise local taxes to provide workers with a fair wage, according to County Board Chairman Tom Kautza.

While the pay issue is common with almost all departments with the county, it’s more pronounced with the jail because of the public safety factor, according to Chief Deputy George Lenzner.

“We’re losing employees. It started during COVID, and one of the big problems is finding people to even hire when you’re losing employees,” Lenzner said. “It’s pretty common to lose employees at the jail, but now it’s going up more. We’re losing our local people who live in the community.”

Lenzner noted that it’s not just losing employees to other counties. Recently, corrections officers have found better pay or the same pay and better scheduling working at Walmart, Charlie’s County Market, Torborg’s and other private-sector businesses. Lenzner told the public safety committee that one corrections officer recently left to work for Calumet County because he would get $15,000 more annually there.

Many of the corrections officers remaining are quickly burning out as many of them are working 18-hour shifts, according to Lenzner. With the corrections officers, county policy dictates that overtime doesn’t kick in until they have worked 86 hours in the 14-day pay period.

“There are a couple of officers that are looking for jobs because now what’s happening is you’re getting low staff,” Lenzner said. “The jail has to meet that magic number, and so it depends what their schedule is. They may work 18 hours, and then six hours later, they have to be back to work. It’s starting to burn people out.”

The $3 pay increase is expected to bring the wages in line with the starting pay for corrections officers. According to Kautza, Shawano County’s starting pay is $17.95 per hour for corrections officers, while Marinette County starts at $19.94 and Oconto County offers $20.57.

“They can leave here, if they’re fully trained and go to Oconto, which will start them out at $22 because they’re already trained,” Kautza said.

Hiring people is still a factor, Lenzner noted. He said the sheriff’s department had at least eight applicants lined up for potential interviews, but only two have confirmed. The department has made offers to prospective employees only to be turned down because they found other jobs. That’s from the ones who have called Lenzner and other officials back, he said, adding that oftentimes potential hires will ghost him — not call back at all.

“For some reason, people do not want to work right now,” Lenzner said.

The alternative to not raising wages would be to farm out inmates to other county jails, but that is expected to cost Shawano County more in the long run, according to Lenzner. At the cost of $135 per day, the county could pay $100,000 annually to other jails holding Shawano County prisoners.

“That’s a huge cost to the county,” Lenzner said. “I can’t just throw in patrol officers to work in the jail because they’re not certified jailors. Plus, there wouldn’t be anyone left to work on the road, right now, as we had a lot of turnover with traffic this spring, too.”

Lenzner noted that the county is holding more inmates than normal due to the pandemic freezing the county’s ability to have jury trials for more than a year.

“They’re not happy because they’ve been in there longer than most of them expected and what we expected,” Lenzner said. “They take it out on the corrections officers.”

Kautza pointed out that county supervisors will need to knuckle down and re-evaluate priorities across all departments, because the county cannot provide current services indefinitely without other revenue sources.

“We can do this for a couple of years until we do a revamping of the whole county,” Kautza said. “The whole county has to be looked at, and we’ve got to get back to a few of the basics and concentrate on doing that.”

Supervisor Mark Bolin urged the public safety committee to move quickly to come up with a plan that will sustain the jail and other departments beyond 2024.

“The fact of the matter is the can has been kicked down the road for years, and it’s come to a head,” Bolin said. “We’ve got a serious freaking problem, so let’s just deal with it and take care of it.”

The overtime issue is expected to be resolved by the public safety committee in August.