Kootenai County commissioners consider employee wage increase

COEUR d’ALENE — Kootenai County commissioners will weigh pay increases for county employees as part the budgeting process for fiscal year 2025. 

Commissioners will convene for three more budget deliberation meetings between next Tuesday and July 19. A preliminary balanced budget will be presented Aug. 1, and a public hearing on the budget is scheduled Aug. 28. Commissioners are expected to adopt a final budget Aug. 30. 

During an earlier budget deliberation meeting, county HR director Sylvia Proud recommended a 3.5% cost of living adjustment for all county employees for FY2025, a $2.3 million increase overall.  

Proud said this recommendation was based off recent consumer price data and compared against other local and state agencies, which have proposed cost of living adjustments ranging from 3% to 3.5%. 

Commissioner Leslie Duncan noted that Kootenai County plans to conduct a wage study next year for Fiscal Year 2026. If the county makes no cost-of-living adjustment for employees in the meantime, she said, wages may lag behind market rate. 

“We may not be able to catch up,” she said Tuesday.

Duncan said funding step increases for eligible employees on their anniversary date takes priority over cost-of-living adjustments. Even so, she said she’d like county employees to receive something to offset any increased costs for health insurance. 

Proud previously noted that pension costs are expected to rise and health insurance costs will increase an estimated $1.1 million. 

“I’m willing to go down to a 1% (cost-of-living adjustment) at this point, or budget talks,” Duncan said Tuesday. 

“We’ve got to start somewhere,” Commissioner Bruce Mattare said. 

Mattare said he’d like to see no tax increase for Fiscal Year 2025, though county finance director Brandi Falcon indicated that it would be impossible to do so without passing significant costs on to county employees. 

“You’d have to pass the $1 million in health insurance increases completely (on to employees),” Falcon told commissioners. “You could do no (step increases), no COLA. You would have to cut every single new program request and you would have to cut every single A-budget personnel request and you would still be $1 million in the hole.” 

Commissioners will also consider whether to cut funding for positions at the county that have been open for more than 100 days. 

Most of these open positions are within the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, Mattare said, and some are being filled.

“I’d be open to looking at maybe 25% of those positions getting funded less, because I expect us to fill them,” he said. 

The next budget deliberation meeting is July 2. 

    Mattare