A lengthy discussion between members of the Washington County Board of Supervisors occurred at their November 15th meeting regarding a personnel change request from the County Ambulance Department. The request was for a total raise of $3.74 per hour, fully effective January 1st for paramedic Jeff Lavrenz, who told department management that if it were not approved, he would be forced to move to part-time status, further stretching a staff that finds themselves currently “mandatoried in for overtime” as described by then Interim Ambulance Director Pat Curl. Curl served in that position from October 27th, when then County Ambulance Director Jeremy Peck was placed on month long administrative leave without pay. Curl tendered his resignation to county officials November 17th, effective immediately. Curl cited his interim tag and the turmoil within the department as reasons for the Supervisors to be involved in the decision. Curl said, “I felt the current situation was not one where I should be requesting or supporting any pay raises for anybody until somethings settle down, and that’s what I told him. I told him if he wanted to go to the board with any requests he could, I just don’t think at this particular point in time it would be fair to give him a pay raise and not other individuals that had been looked at. These are things that Jeremy (Peck) and I were looking at but we never got to the point to complete the process of evaluating doing that. Jeremy (Peck) did the evals for employees back in July and after that we started discussions on where we should be looking at giving individuals pay raises.”
Supervisor Jack Seward cited three recent resignations within paramedic staff as reason to review this request and prevent further departures of those who were assets to the department. Discussion between the two revolved around factors including qualifications and evaluations done over the summer. Seward said, “I would think it would be a good thing for us to keep him (Lavrenz) on and give him that pay raise.”
Curl replied, “All I can say is I’m going to suppose you’ll get additional requests from other employees wanting the same thing.”
To which Seward responded, “First of all, you know now our attitude is to support keeping good people. Second of all, according to this, he was repeatedly told that the Board of Supervisors would not approve it.”
Curl explained that he had not told Lavrenz anything about a Board decision and reiterated that as an Interim Director he was not in a position to make a decision and that “whatever the Board decides to do you do”. Seward also cited low numbers on the paramedic staff as another reason to approve the request.
Members of the board then shared comments. Supervisor Stan Stoops agreed on the idea of a raise, but wanted to discuss the accomplishments to justify the move and read through a listed submitted to the board through email by Lavrenz including overall tenure, specialty work, leadership roles and more. Supervisor Marcus Fedler asked Curl about the typical path to pay raises and rise through the department as a paramedic and any precedent for someone to join the staff above level 1. Curl said advancement is based on evaluation in categories such as quality of work, extra committee work and tenure, and said that he would not comment in the meeting why Lavrenz was started at level 1. To that point, Curl said that he felt putting the final decision on him for this raise request was inappropriate as he was not involved in evaluations done over the summer. Fedler then explained his stance on the board’s role in specific department operations and why he was against granting the request. “I’m not a fan of micromanaging a department head. I would be careful about something like this. Not just in a way that sets a precedent but, if the department head feels that staff is in where they need to be, and there was a process in July where you evaluate the employees and then you have a process that hasn’t necessarily been done yet, we’re trying to figure out what that is right now, we need to make that determination. I think that’s up to the department head to do, not the Board of Supervisors. I know we’re kind of supposed to be your boss and the CEO of the County and make the right decisions here, and I want to do that, but I don’t want to step over your experience. I’d much rather have a department head come to us with a recommendation, rather than us force upon a department head our recommendation. I don’t want to set that precedent. I still don’t support it. We’re opening a can of worms we don’t want to open. Given enough time we can work this thing out, and that’s one thing we haven’t done.”
Supervisor Bob Yoder explained his unease about granting one request and the possibility of that opening up the county to an influx of many similar requests. The board ultimately voted in a 3-2 split decision to award the pay raise change request with Seward, Stoops and Young in favor and Fedler and Yoder opposed.