Low pay sending public safety officials away

Supervisor wants county to up pay for dispatchers, deputies, corrections officers
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

“Who do you call when you need assistance? 9-1-1, of course. The calm voice on the other end asks you what your emergency is and how may we help. They listen to the caller, ask pertinent questions and then dispatch the deputy, fire and/or ambulance personnel in the area.”

Shawano County Supervisor Theresa Serrano said those sentences to start off her speech to the county board on April 20 as she continues to crusade for better wages for county employees, especially those involved with law enforcement. She was speaking of the dispatchers who work the emergency lines at the sheriff’s department.

Serrano, who sits on the county’s public safety committee, continued by saying the dispatchers are doing all this work while dealing with multiple computer screens and maintaining a level of professionalism while dealing with emergencies. The high-stress position demands a certain level of pay, but Shawano County currently pays $17.67 per hour for those just starting. As a result, she said, other nearby counties offering higher pay are scooping up existing dispatchers, and efforts to find others to fill the positions have been extremely difficult.

“This is the lowest starting wage in the field for all of the adjacent counties,” Serrano said.

It’s not just dispatchers, though. The sheriff’s department is having a difficult time holding onto deputies and correction officers, as well.

Serrano has gone on ride-alongs with deputies and shadowed correctional officers to see what their shifts entail. She said that deputies have voiced concerns over needing better radios and other equipment, but more of the concerns have been about department turnover and pay.

“Our Shawano County deputies are men and women who have chosen to serve and protect each one of us day after day,” Serrano said. “They put their lives on the line every day.”

She emphasized that every emergency call and traffic stop has the potential to be hazardous, and in return, the county pays its deputies $25.37 per hour to start out. As for its correctional officers, they get a starting wage of $17.67 per hour, the same as the dispatchers.

“We are unable to find qualified candidates for our CO positions, deputy positions and our 9-1-1 dispatch position because we are nowhere close to the starting wages offered by our neighboring counties,” Serrano said. “Some of the correctional and dispatch wages are $2 or $3 higher starting out in the county, and there are fewer people countywide. How is that even possible?”

Serrano added it’s not just other counties attracting qualified candidates. Some, after going through the interview process and finding out what Shawano County offers in pay, end up taking other jobs in the private sector.

“People have turned down our positions because they can get paid more working at a paper mill than working for our county in a position they went to college for and earned a two- or four-year college degree in,” Serrano said. “I am passionate about this because we expect these men and women to aid in our hour of need, but we are not paying them a decent wage to live a decent life, as we all want for ourselves.”

Serrano urged her board colleagues to look into ways to cut costs for the county so that it can offer competitive wages for law enforcement personnel. She said changes can be as simple as turning off lights in rooms not in use or going paperless, something she noted some board members have had a hard time with in spite of having tablets containing the information they need for their work.

“We will continue to lose qualified people in all these public safety positions if we, as a county, do not do something quickly,” Serrano said.

County Board Chairman Tom Kautza praised Serrano for wanting to make things better for law enforcement personnel, but he said the county can’t just improve wages for one department without considering impacts to other departments.

“We can’t always give a raise to this little group or that little group,” Kautza said. “I will agree that, as we’re sitting on the committees, we’ve got to look at everything that’s being done, and we’ve got to realize that the money isn’t there like it used to be.”

Supervisor Aaron Damrau suggested looking at an alternative to running two jail buildings — the main jail and the Huber Work Release Center — as a way to cut down costs and bring public safety wages up.

“Our criminal justice system is expensive, and housing people in jail is expensive,” Damrau said. “I don’t believe any of the surrounding counties have two jails like we do. What other counties are doing is eliminating housing people in jail for Huber. Waupaca County is putting people on an ankle monitor. We have two facilities now, and if we change how we do things, which is usually a big, scary concept that people don’t want to do, we could save money.”

Interim administrative coordinator James Davel said that many Huber inmates are already on ankle monitors, and Shawano County also works with other counties to house some of their inmates for a cost.


lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com