Effingham County commissioners are expected to take a look at a handful of changes in job titles and job descriptions for county employees at their meeting today.

At their Aug. 7 meeting, commissioners heard requests from county department heads to bring job titles and descriptions into line with current performances and responsibilities.

During budget discussions this spring, county commissioners had more than 40 requests for new personnel, but wanted to hold the line on adding more people to the county payroll.

“Instead of hiring 20 people, let’s look at compensating our people and ask them to take on more responsibility,” commission Chairwoman Verna Phillips said.

Phillips told her fellow commissioners she inferred from the budget talks that the commissioners didn’t want to add more personnel right now.

“It’s about looking at taking care of the people we have,” she said. “If I got that wrong, tell me, because that’s what I got out of it.”

Effingham’s explosive growth also has put it in a difficult position for compensation. For purposes of classification and compensation among Georgia counties, Effingham is a C county.

But the majority of counties in the C group are around 25,000 in population, according to Effingham human resources director Rushe Hudzinski-Sero, and the list of B counties starts at 50,000 in population. Effingham’s current estimated population is nearly 49,000.

Also, department heads lamented hiring new people, training them and then losing them to other nearby counties that offer better pay.

“It’s also about longevity and keeping that expertise here,” county finance director Joanna Floyd said.

Chief Appraiser Janis Bevill said she is trying to rewrite every job description, since the ones her office uses were written in the 1990s before the wave of technology caught up to county government.

“I have lost two real property appraisers in two months, and I’m about to lose another,” she said. “They have to have technical training.”

Phillips said the private sector has backed off using cost of living adjustments to increase pay for employees.

“I feel people should be paid for their performance,” she said. “With the merit raises, we have to trust our department heads are making the right decisions.

“We have to do the right thing. There’s a lot of positives if you reinforce the people you have. It’s not anything more than saying and we want to take care of them and in accordance to what the market dictates.”

The county’s pay scale was poor 25 years ago, and hasn’t improved a great deal, Commissioner Jeff Utley attested. He worked for the county from 1978-84 and got $381 every two weeks.

“I liked to have starved to death,” he said. “It’s not much better now than what it was then.”