CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. – On Thursday, September 9 at 5 p.m., the Cibola County Board of Commissioners held a special meeting to discuss two considerations, one of which County Manager Kate Fletcher was very excited about. Chairman Daniel Torrez and Commissioner Ralph Lucero were absent from the meeting, while Commissioner Martha Garcia participated in the meeting via phone call. Commissioner Lowery filled in for Torrez and led the meeting.
The two considerations on the agenda included Consideration of Order Setting Property Tax Rates for 2021 Property Tax Year Pursuant to NMSA 1978, Section 7-37- 7 (2006) and Consideration and Discussion of Salary Study Plan Presented by Vincent A. Yermal. According to Manager Fletcher, the first consideration referred to an “annual action that [they] have to do” in order to make sure that the tax rates are correct. The consideration was approved.
The second consideration involved a plan that has been in the works for awhile and is going to be very helpful for Cibola County, Fletcher emphasized. With that, the floor was passed over to Vincent A. Yermal, founder of S Resource, Incorporated. Yermal started working on the Position Classification and Salary Plan Study for Cibola County before the pandemic and concluded the study just in time to report the results at the Sept. 9 special meeting. Yermal has conducted this study for many other counties around New Mexico, and many of them are currently operating under the plans he developed for them.
Yermal started off by talking about the purposes and benefits of compensation programs, saying that usually people do not work just for the “pure enjoyment” of it, but because they need the compensation and support. Yermal talked about five goals of the plans that he develops, which were that they are internally equitable, externally competitive, personally motivating, effectively administered, and that it is a continuing program. “The system needs to be maintained,” said Yermal. Yermal also continued by adding that an organization should recognize that their current plan is not working when they start having issues with both recruiting new employees and keeping existing ones.
Part of what Yermal did to conduct the study was meet with almost all county officials and personnel and have them fill out Position Description Questionnaires. First, what Yermal had to do was determine what all of position classifications in the county were and see if there were any cases in which multiple employees were doing essentially the same job, which there were. Yermal resolved some of these issues by recommending title changes. Next, Yermal created a salary structure for Cibola County based off of the value of each position in the market and in other counties. Cibola County did not have a salary structure prior to the study. Positively though, Yermal reported 54 of 60 county jobs and positions (90 percent) having a place within the salary structure.
Yermal then dove into explaining the salary structure and how within the structure, there is a breakdown of possible salaries into a system of at least 100 tiers, and there are minimums, midpoints, and maximums for each salary tier. According to Yermal’s findings, out of a total of 69 county jobs, there are 24 county employees below the minimum assigned salary for their position, 34 between their designated minimum and midpoint, 58 below their designated midpoint, 11 between their designated midpoint and maximum, and zero above their designated maximum. This information is useful because it shows the county how they can establish appropriate compensation for their employees. It also shows them what is feasible and what is not. For example, in order to bring all 58 county employees below the midpoint to the midpoint of their salaries, it would take $413,479 to accomplish that, which is not feasible. However, it is more feasible to focus on bringing the 24 employees below their minimum to the minimum point for an overall cost of $67,628.
Therefore, Yermal’s only recommendation as a result of the study was to focus on bringing the 24 employees below their salary minimums to their midpoints. According to Yermal, the end goal is to align the county’s salary structure with the market values for those positions as much as possible. Another piece of advice that Yermal offered was to stay away from the method of giving pay raises across the board, but rather applying raises that are proportionate to where each employee is at in the salary tier range. For example, offering those that are further below their midpoint bigger raises and those closer to their midpoint smaller raises. Yermal also suggested not hiring new employees with a higher salary than existing employees in the same classification because it is simply “bad business” and makes employees feel unappreciated. Finally, Yermal also reminded the board to offer as many incentives as possible to entry level hires so that they feel encouraged to continue moving forward in their classification and grow in their particular organization.
At the end of the presentation, Fletcher expressed her appreciation for this study plan being completed. According to Fletcher, the county was in great need of a salary structure so that they could refer to something substantial when making decisions about hires and employee salaries, rather than paying people what they “feel” they should earn or because they’ve known them personally for years. Despite Fletcher’s thorough excitement for the plan, the commissioners present decided they wanted to take more time to consider the plan, consider how they would go about implementing it, and put the consideration on the next regular meeting’s agenda so that they could discuss it when all commissioners were present.
The next regular Cibola County Commission meeting will be held on September 23 at 5 p.m.