When elected officials start talking (or voting) pay raises for themselves they have forgotten what public service is all about; it’s a sacrifice, not a meal ticket. Public service is not a career. Citizens are supposed to ‘serve their time’ then return to the private sector. With this vote to increase their pay they have guaranteed they will be returning to the private sector as soon as their current terms are up. Their actions will ensure we ‘attract the best and brightest’ come the next Board of Supervisor’s election. I suggest they start saving their ‘raises’ and start working on their resumes as in four years there will be some new ‘faces’ on the Board of Supervisors who understand what public service is all about.

Lacking from this conversation is any objective analysis of just what is the right pay for county supervisors in Linn county. There are many experts who conduct extensive study of appropriate pay for all types of professionals. Have any of them been consulted? I have not even read about how Linn County Supervisors pay compares to other comparable counties in the state. What are the Polk County supervisors paid?

The Supervisors, in retrospect, probably made a mistake by voluntarily taking part-time status for a limited period of time. Do they have to live with the mistake forever?

A rationale that is incorporated into some of the arguments is that the supervisors make more than the average Linn County resident. So do most, if not all, doctors, attorneys, accountants, CEOs etc. Does that make them over paid?

The average supervisors pay in Iowa is $38K. You do the math. When I researched this prior, I found some counties (I think neighboring) don’t even pay their supervisors. Sorry to say, I’m not in Mr. Olesons district (the lone no voter) but I am in John Harris’s. We voted Houser out after 19 years and we can do it for the newest member too. So enjoy those raises while they last.

No one is against raises but 25%! Then have the nerve to decrease other elected officials pay from 4 down to 2! Maybe the compensation board should be in charge of the supervisors pay because there is nothing super about them.

Rich, you may have missed earlier article in The Gazette regarding Board of Supervisor pay. Here is excerpt: “Former Rep. Schulte noted that the supervisors in Polk County, which is twice as large as Linn County with a budget that is twice as large, get paid only a little more than what the Linn supervisors will get if they agree to a status change and a 25 percent pay increase. Supervisors in Scott County, Iowa’s third largest county behind Linn, earn about $50,000 a year, Schulte said. To put in perspective, 2011 population for Polk County (437,399), Linn County (213,875), Scott (167,095), Johnson County (133,038).

This is a unpublished letter to the editor I submitted.
Let’s compare our supervisors to another group of civil servants, volunteer firefighters.( Small town I live near has a all volunteer department) Supervisors seek there job, know what the compansation is, and have a relative schedule. Volunteers seek their position, know what the job entails, and when the need arises come to service. The local department I’m familiar with had roughly 180-200 calls in 2012, and those are calls anytime in the 24 hrs/day, they go through training, and have weekly firehouse training/ meetings all on their own time. Compensation for their service is vey limited, a few dollars/ call I believe, but yet I never hear of working too hard or long and not being paid enough. That is a true public servant. The occupations of the firefighters are varied, from drs., to bankers, to mechanics ,to farmers, and all in between.My advise to the supervisors would be to look at their mirrored desk tops and ask themselves, what do I do out of the ordinary that des erves a 25% pay increase, and if they are honest with themselves compared to volunteers the answer will be crystal clear.

Or, we could look at what actually happened. The sups voted to acknowledge that their jobs actually are full-time. That they were paid less than full-time was the result of a bunch of whiners who didn’t get their way back when we went from 3 to 5 sups…back when Republicans who otherwise couldn’t get elected in this county demanded more seats and representation by district. Those same folks then complained that they though the pay for 3 would be divided by 5. That was never part of the deal, and the whining just more sour grapes from county Repubs. The sups couldn’t vote themselves a pay cut without causing all manner of problems with pay to other electeds and department heads and such (statutory issues) so, to help calm things down, so they found a loophole and opted to go to less than full-time status. Then the floods came, causing their positions, their responsibilities, their duties to be far more than 40-hour-week jobs.
This vote merely acknowledges that the jobs are indeed full-time. Poor journalism only exacerbates the optics of the situation, inciting our citizenry without even the slightest pretext of presenting all the facts.
Oleson’s vote shows that he’s either not willing to work a full-time job in serving our citizenry (and that should come back to bite him in the backside in a few years), or that he doesn’t feel his performance is worth what the job should actually pay (based on a myriad of factors)…or that he’s just pandering to the teaderps who would otherwise challenge him from the radical right in a primary. Yep, Oleson blew it, and gets props from an ignorant electorate abetted by sensationalizing “journalists” (using that term very loosely).
Way to do Murdoch proud.

Why didn’t the supervisors vote to return to a full time position in 2009, when they acknowledged to the compensation board that it was full time, I believe Oleson also recomended at that time to leave the pay the same. Seems pretty ironic that when 3 of the 5 are elected to new terms the pay changes. I would call Oleson a good public servant, some things all the tea in China can’t buy.