Several members of the Carroll County Board of Commissioners have expressed concerns that the pay scale for employees of the county Fire Department is significantly lower than those of other counties in the state, encouraging Carroll County firefighters of all rank to transfer elsewhere for more pay and making it that much more difficult for the county to retain veteran workers.

Commissioner Kevin Jackson said not only does the discrepancy in the amount county firefighters receive over their counterparts in other parts of the state encourage qualified workers to go to other counties but it also translates into a loss of taxpayer dollars, stemming from the county’s efforts to train employees who take their training and then go elsewhere.

“Many of our employees require training and that training is a cost to the county government and inevitably the citizens,” Jackson said. “When we put all that training into them, many times as soon as they receive their training there’s an opening in another county, and they take it, and they’re gone.”

And the numbers show just how big of a discrepancy exists. In Carroll County, firefighter salaries max out at $41,643 a year, with the entry-level wage coming in at just over $22,000 annually. Compared to bigger counties in metro Atlanta, there really is no comparison.

Those working in Cobb County start at $38,355, with the highest paid firefighter receiving $60,000 a year. In Athens-Clarke County, with a population a mere 1,000 people more than Carroll County, low-level firefighters start at $31,000, and max out at nearly $6,000 higher than the highest paid Carroll County firefighter.

And the discrepancy grows when you compare higher ranking fire officials from Carroll to other counties. Where Carroll County Fire Chief Tracy Smith makes just less than $85,000 a year, the chief in Augusta/Richmond County makes $144,000 a year, and the Cobb County chief makes roughly $127,000 annually. Once again, while Athens-Clarke County has a comparable population to Carroll, its fire chief makes $23,000 more than Smith does annually.

Even some positions on the Carrollton Fire Department, which serves a population less than a quarter the size of all of Carroll County, pay greater than the exact same position on the county level. The most blaring example of this can be seen in the position of captain, whereas those holding such a rank in Carrollton start out at $55,000 and max out at $57,000 a year, those doing the same job in Carroll County start out at $32,000, with the highest paid captain in Carroll County making slightly more than $48,000 a year.

Not only would the county benefit from raising the salaries through employee retention, Jackson said, but higher pay would also allow the county to ask more of its workers.

“When you’re competitive it gives you the ability to retain quality employees and also, when you’re paying people a competitive wage you can set some real expectations of them. When you raise wages, you can also raise expectations of them,” Jackson said. “We have a lot of employees that are doing a good job, and they deserve competitive pay.”

Commissioner Trent North said the board has taken steps to increase firefighter pay in the past, though it hasn’t translated into a parity in pay between Carroll and other counties for several reasons. Around the turn of millennium, the board voted to increase employee payroll by roughly $1.5 million, and continued for the next several years increasing pay for a number of departments, including public safety. But, at the same time, other counties were also increasing the pay for their public safety workers, and where Carroll County ended pay increases in the mid 2000s, other counties continued to raise salaries, leaving Carroll employees behind, encouraging them to look elsewhere for more money.

“You know we owe it to our employees to make sure they’re compensated,” North said.

Commissioner Ashley Hendrix agreed, saying the board needed to address the discrepancy in fire department pay come time to prepare the 2010-2011 fiscal year budget.

“This is not something new. This has gone on for a long time, and when it comes budget time we can look to do something in terms of a raise of some sort,” Hendrix said. “For me, one of the greatest needs that we are providing to the citizens is emergency services. We train them, and we have some of the best employees, and I think that pay raises is definitely something we should consider.”