The Greene County Supervisors recently approved salary increases for county-elected officials.

At their meeting last Thursday, the Board approved a 2.5-percent increase for all county-elected officials, except for Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams who received a 4.16-percent increase. The County Compensation Board recommended a three-percent raise for all elected officials, and the sheriff to receive a five-percent raise. Supervisor Chair John Muir shared the Board’s  explanation of why they chose to lower the Compensation Board’s recommendation.

“We just felt like, I think our consensus was in these times and some of the things we see going on, I know (there’s) salary freezes until we get through the COVID. Just the economic times and the times with COVID, we felt like that was a fair raise. Is it the best we’d like to do? No. But we thought it was a responsible thing for us to do with the responsibilities we have to the taxpayers, and some of the things they’re dealing with now in their own lives.”

Since the Supervisors approved a 0.5-percent change from the Compensation Board’s recommendation, the same percentage of change had to be applied to the sheriff’s raise. The Board also intends to give a 2.5-percent raise to all other non-elected employees as well. The Board will once again approve the raises when they certify the budget sometime in March.