Donna Kurtz Explains EDC and County Employee Pay Raise Votes

Donna Kurtz

An email from McHenry County Board member Donna Kurtz:

“Saw your article on voting for the EDC.

“Just wanted to tell you that although I voted for the $163K or so to contribute to marketing McHenry County to the business world, and of course we are competing for these business opportunities with other county EDCs, I have NOT supported any of the payroll increases that we have voted on in 2012.

“These payroll increases are the real dollars, in the millions, that cause the cost of government to go up over the years.

“For example, regular salaries are approximately $46.7 million out of a $90 Million budget for the County.

“Technically, when we vote to increase even by 2% these salaries our budget increases by $934K.

“Then when we provide annual salary increases we increase the increases exponentially.

“These are the real costs that have the greatest impact on increasing tax payer costs and/or push government toward deficit spending.

“In closing, the latest vote that was just passed supported a 2.5% for our non-union County employees http://www.nwherald.com/mobile/article.xml/articles/2012/07/03/r_txifo0dr4ykn8t1qfatfq/index.xml.

“I greatly respect the work that all of the County employees provide, but I could not vote for this increase because I have gotten very strong guidance for people all over the county that they don’t want to pay any more for their government at this and this increase, which is for approximately half of our county employees will amount to approximately $500K annually.

“My decisions on these votes are important because they allow me to position the tax levy increase situation appropriately in November.

“Please post this email on the blog if you’d like. I just wanted to make sure you understand the extent of the actions I have taken as a Board Member to be fiscally conservative.”

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