Clay County Commission 

Dan Haglund

The long-awaited Clay County employee compensation study was rolled out by human resource director Darren Brooke before the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday in Moorhead.
The findings, overseen by Dr. Tessia Melvin of David Drown Associates in Minneapolis, presented two options for the board.
And the board chose the first option, which includes a 3 percent wage hike for all Clay County employees, on top of a previously scheduled 3 percent cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA). That adds up to a 6 percent increase for 2025.
And Brooke said after the scheduled COLA increases in 2020, the county has kept fairly well in line with other comparable counties.
In 2019-20, Clay County completed a market study through David Drown which resulted in not only a 2.0 percent COLA increase but also a 5.42 percent salary increase.
Brooke said the previous study was completed about three months before the Covid-19 pandemic, “so there was a much different workforce prior to Covid than there is right now.”
In 2020, the study found there were 22 positions that were deemed “below market value” and those grades were increased accordingly, Brooke said. The COLAs in the past three years have been 4 percent (2023), 3 percent (2024) and 3 percent (2025).
“The (nine) union contracts that we recently signed go from 2023 to 2025, so we still have one more year on the union contract,” Brooke said. “But during those negotiations, we promised the market study would be done during that time, and this is the result.”
First off, the market analysis shows the current pay grid is calibrated at 5 percent under market average minimum rates, 2 percent under average maximum rates, and 5 percent under market average actual rates.
Brooke stressed that other counties are undergoing studies presently, and that it is hard to arrive at perfect comparisons as the job market remains flexible post-pandemic.
“Some of the things that we have to consider are other counties’ pay philosophies, where they are in the market, difficult positions to fill, retention issues, tax base,” Brooke said. “All of that goes into how a county determines what their market study is going to be and how much they’re going to give.”
The salary benchmarks were determined by comparing 48 job titles within 17 counties, all but one in Minnesota, as well as the City of Moorhead and the City of Fargo. And because not every equivalent job can be found in every county or city, the study did set a minimum of five comparable job salaries.
Currently, Clay County has 687 employees (including about 150 variable-hour employees) within 163 job titles, of which 96 have maxed out at pay grade steps 12 and 13. Step 13 is “deputy first-class pay.” There are 122 employees at Step 1.
Two particular job titles, correctional facility sergeant and human resources coordinator, will have additional pay hikes to better align with where the market study places their ideal salaries.
“We have a lot of employees,” Brooke said. “We have grown tremendously in the last several years.
Brooke said those employees which are scheduled to receive pay increases will see it on payday this Friday.
The results of the study presented two overall options, Brooke said.
Option one, he said, is very similar to what the county implemented after the pre-Covid market study. This option suggests adding 3 percent ($1,007,476) to the current 3 percent COLA, with all employees receiving the same wage hike. The result would, in essence, become a 6 percent across-the-board wage increase.
“The negative it is a big tab to pay all at once starting on January 1,” Brooke said. “But it does immediately impact the (salary) grid, an assist with the new people coming in, and attracting new talent to Clay County.”
Option two was discarded, as it was suggesting 3-percent pay increases with each step. But the study found that some employees would actually not be getting an appropriate raise with this option.
So Option three moved into the place of the original Option two.
This option would eliminate Step 1 pay grade and add on additional pay grade at the top, step 13. It would bump all the Step 1 employees to Step 2. The overall pay increases would total about $465,586, but Brooke said this number could change slightly before the end of the year. All of the increases would kick in with the first pay period of 2025.
“There’s an immediate cost to this, but it’s not all equal” Brooke said. “This mostly impacts new employees at Step 1, and the long-term employees at Step 12.”
Commissioner Kevin Campbell, Dist. 4, added that the addition of Stearns County, Minn., at the behest of Commissioner Jenny Mongeau, Dist. 3, among the benchmark counties in the study helps to produce numbers closer to what are seen closer to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and along the Interstate-94 corridor. St. Cloud lies within Stearns County.
Campbell voiced his leanings toward Option 1.
“Between Option 1 and Option 3, I think Option 3 would be putting a band-aid on something that probably would not work in the long-term,” Campbell said. “We talk about that we make a commitment to the team, all employees of the county. And for us to do this wage study, and to just put a band-aid on it would not be right.”
Commissioner Paul Krabbenhoft, Dist. 1 and David Ebinger, Dist. 5, and Mongeau all said they support Campbell’s opinion on Option 1 as well.
Campbell made the motion to approve the market study wage increase Option 1, set for the first pay period of 2025, with Krabbenhoft seconding it. Discussion was nil and all commissioners approved.