Alamance County’s governing board has agreed to shell out more than $300,000 over the next six months to boost the salaries of hundreds of county staff members that a hired consultant had found to be trailing their peers in other jurisdictions.
The county’s board of commissioners ultimately voted 3-to-1to implement these “market-based” adjustments in order to benefit 420 staff members that Sarah Towne of the firm BakerTilly had identified in a recent review of the county’s payroll.
Towne’s recommendations, which were presented to the commissioners on Tuesday, were the latest of three such proposals that she has unveiled since the county first retained BakerTilly to conduct a market analysis of its staff compensation. The firm’s first set of suggestions, which the county implemented in 2024, focused on the county’s most turnover ridden positions, while a second round in 2025 factored in other public safety and human services staff.
Towne told the commissioners that her most recent proposals extended her earlier work to the county’s general government employees. As with her previous submissions, she said that these recommendations were based on a comparison of salaries in Alamance County and 15 other jurisdictions that the county’s administrators had identified as their organizational peers. She added that her latest analysis found Alamance County to be well positioned with respect to these rivals – at least when it came to the lower end of the pay scale.
“The minimums were competitive,” the consultant explained when she appeared before the county’s leaders on Tuesday. “The medians were aligned to the market. But the maximums needed some adjustment…and we want to make sure that the minimums are competitive so people can move to the midpoints.”
Towne added that she used the comparative data she gleaned to realign the county’s pay grades so that the starting salary for every position fall within its market-based range. She then tacked on an additional 2 percent per year for each staff member’s tenure – up to a maximum of 18 percent for employees with 9 years in the county’s employ.
Towne went on to concede that, as a matter of principle, she didn’t suggest any downward adjustments for staff members who earn more than the market-based rate for their posts. She added, however, that she proposed some sort of pay bump for 420 individuals to bring their salaries up to par. According to Towne’s own calculation, the average increase she recommended amounted to about $1,503 a year for each staff member.
The board of commissioners went on vote 3-to-1 to set aside $313,703 over six months, or $627,407 per annum, to cover the consultant’s proposed “market-based” raises.
The lone vote of opposition to this measure came from commissioner Ed Priola, who took umbrage with some of the assumptions that the county’s consultants had made in the course of her study.
“What troubles me about the study is that I see correlation…but I don’t hear any causation at this stage,” the commissioner said before Tuesday’s vote. “So, are we in fact losing employees to other counties?”
Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, said that he has seen previous payroll adjustments do much to reduce the turnover rates within certain county departments.
“Through the first two phases of this study,” he added, “we’ve been able to bring ourselves to a position…where we’re much better than we used to be.”
Carter went on to join commissioner Pam Thompson and Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, in the 3-to-1 vote that greenlit this allocation. Priola voted against the allocation, while commissioner John Paisley, Jr., was absent from Tuesday’s meeting.
