It has been nearly two years in the making, but Carbon County officials hope to address the employee salary scale during next Thursday’s commissioners’ meeting.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners said that they are currently finalizing the employee classifications, based on the results of a salary study that was recently completed by Evergreen Solutions LLC of Tallahassee, Florida.

“We’re trying to compare and narrow the pay scales, grouping together job descriptions of all the employees and where they properly fit in the scale,” Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said. “It’s been a challenge to say the least.” He added that as much as the county had its concerns about Evergreen once the process started, the company’s results gave the county a good starting point on where the wages needed to go.

Since then, the human resources department has been going through every position and grouping them based on job descriptions. The hope is to scale down the pay scale so it is simpler.

“Evergreen got us to the red zone,” Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said. “HR is getting us across the goal line.”

Commissioner Rocky Ahner, who has been the skeptic of Evergreen’s process from the start, said the company truly helped show just where salaries should be.

Ahner had also worked on his own salary study for the last several months in hope of providing some insight on where he thought the wages should be.

The board added that they feel the new scales will be very close to where the county needs to be, with maybe little tweaks here and there after it is adopted.

Carbon County hired Evergreen in July 2021 at a cost of $48,000.

The goal of the study was to look at the positions of the approximate 400 employees and determine a proper compensation scale across all departments for the same type of positions. The county currently has 16 levels for salaries for nonsupervisory positions and about 21 levels for supervisory.

The last study regarding employee salary rates was adopted in the 1990s, and since then, the system has been piecemealed because positions evolved and more and more titles were created.

Carbon County first discussed moving on a survey looking at employment classifications at the beginning of 2021 after a suggestion at the annual salary board by President Judge Roger Nanovic because of turnover rates due to higher wages in other counties.

In July, the county salary board took a step with several lower paid positions by removing the grade 4 pay scale and moving all grade 4 employees to grade 5. That brought those positions up to at least $11.38 per hour.