The Mathews County Board of Supervisors met last Thursday, April 2 to resume a closed session continued from March 24 on legal matters pertaining to Hole in the Wall Waterfront Grill. The board also resumed the open session on budget priorities and goals.
During the open session, the board revisited funding of a compensation and classification plan for county employees that it had previously decided to include in the budget at a cost of $164,000.
Supervisor Tim Doss had requested on March 24 that the board remove the plan from the budget, but the board voted at that time to leave it in. However, he raised the question again at the April 2 session, asking County Administrator Ramona Wilson why no dollar amounts had been given the board for the actual salary increases that were being requested.
Wilson gave a lengthy explanation to the board about the need to implement the class and comp plan to prevent employees from leaving county employment for more lucrative positions elsewhere. She said it was also necessary to make sure that there was a “structured, equitable framework to ensure internal equality,” as well as equal pay provided for similar work.
While it has been suggested that Mathews should be compared to Middlesex in terms of salaries, said Wilson, the locations that Mathews has to compete with for employees are Gloucester, York and other counties in the region. She said that, while larger counties are able to divide up responsibilities, Mathews employees “wear multiple hats” and perform duties that are performed by multiple people elsewhere. Additionally, she said, the school board “did us a real disservice for internal equity” by paying their administrative staffs significantly higher salaries than other county employees with similar jobs make. She said that taking back the classification and comp plan after previously approving it would crush morale and that the board should expect to lose employees if it didn’t adopt the plan.
However, supervisors expressed concerns about the increase in the budget, with Doss pointing out that the school budget had been cut by $600,000 and the county has reduced positions and taken on $12 million in new debt.
Supervisor Janice Phillips said she believed that revenue projections from the meals tax, sales tax and short-term rental tax are “very optimistic” in light of economic uncertainty in the country.
Board chair Tom Bowen said he could no longer support the class and comp plan after he had done a quick comparison of Mathews salaries to Middlesex salaries and had discovered that the plan would cause employees’ salaries to exceed similar positions in Middlesex by several thousand dollars, in some cases by up to $20,000. Nineteen employees in the plan would be receiving pay raises over 5 percent, he said, with some over 20 percent, and “one much higher than that.”
He said Mathews doesn’t have the tax base that counties like York and New Kent have and would never be able to compete with them, and that their salaries could skew the numbers. He said he had been shocked when he had seen the comparisons with Middlesex and didn’t feel the board could rely on “anything else in the study.” He said he would prefer to hold off on the class and comp plan until a survey could be made of other localities in the region.
The board voted 4-1 to hold off on the classification and compensation plan and to gather information themselves in time to be able to adopt a new plan by next year.
The board voted unanimously to pay more to supplement the cost of the increase in the health insurance Plus One and Family plans.
Closed session
No action was taken on the legal matters, which dealt with a discussion of the disposition of real property as it pertains to 384 Old Ferry Road, where the restaurant is located; consultation with legal counsel regarding the lawsuit filed against the board of supervisors and former supervisors Dave Jones and Mike Walls by Hole in the Wall Waterfront Grill; and consultation with the county attorney regarding a number of items, including the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, settlement negotiations, the disposition of publicly held property, contract law, and breach of contract as it pertains to the lease between Mathews County and the restaurant.
Although the motion to continue the March 24 meeting referred only to continuing the closed session, and all items that had been discussed during the open session had been struck through on the agenda for April 2, the board nevertheless continued the open session.
The press was unaware that the open session would resume, and Chairman Tom Bowen stated that no one from the public attended the meeting. County Administrator Ramona Wilson said Bowen had discussed the legality of the meeting with County Attorney Andrea Erard, who had advised the board that the meeting was legal.