Cole County salary study to address salaries for full-time employees
Haley Swaino
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Cole County Commission signed a contract Tuesday to study the salaries of the county’s more than 350 full-time employees.
The $52,500 contract with Condrey and Associates, a human resources firm based in Georgia, will review only full-time positions, with a focus on correcting existing salary compression. Salary compression happens when pay increases for new hires, but doesn’t go up at the same rate for veteran employees.
Commission documents say the study will analyze the existing salary structure and recommend changes based on market pay rates. The focus will be making sure those salaries are competitive.
The county sought a contractor with a minimum of five years professional experience in conducting salary studies for local governments. They also required the firm to have completed at least 10 studies before signing with Cole County.
The last classification and pay plan study in the county was done by the Archer Company in 2006.
The county has approved almost $87 million for salaries. A 2.2% cost-of-living raise plus $500 was approved for salaries within the budget for the 2025 fiscal year.
The study will also seek to understand specific concerns of county employees and officials.
The study will include the assessor’s office employees. Cole County Assessor Christopher Estes told ABC 17 News that salaries at his office are not competitive.
“Almost without exception, you’re going to find that the salaries in the assessor’s office are anywhere from $2,000 to $9,000 less [than jobs with similar descriptions in Cole County],” Estes said.
Estes said troubles began when Missouri’s appraisal commission raised education requirements in 2008.
“They changed it to require that you had a four-year college degree before you could enter the program to become an appraiser, which is just crazy,” Estes said. “You don’t have to have a four-year degree. But the appraisal commission made that change.”
Estes said he now has to make his employees go through even more training.
“So if you go to college for four years, you get out of college and you want to get work for me, I’m going to have to send you through another four years of training to become an appraiser,” Estes said. “And you’re probably going to make about $40,000. Not a very good salary.”
He said he has brought these concerns to the commissioners.
“I’ve gone to the county commissioners and said, ‘Hey, we need to pay my people more,'” Estes said. “And they did a large raise in ’20, I think ’23 and ’24. And both times we got less than everybody else did. The last adjustment that was made for the rest of the county was well over what we got. So all of the people in my office that have comparable jobs … in another office, my accounting clerks and things like that, where the jobs are very similar, their salaries are well below what the other offices are.”
Estes hopes the study will correct the wage gaps his office faces. He said these issues continue to make retention and hiring difficult.
“I’m hoping that the employees in the assessor’s office are treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve and to receive the salaries that are competitive with the other county offices in Cole County, because that’s who they should be competitive with,” Estes said.
Condrey and Associates is required to schedule an initial meeting with the county to discuss how it plans to perform the study. An orientation is scheduled for Sept. 16.