Front Page  »  

SLO County Board of Supervisors vote for 26% pay raise

May 17, 2023

By KAREN VELIE

The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to give themselves a 26% increase in pay, with John Peschong and Debbie Arnold dissenting.

Supervisors Bruce Gibson, Dawn Ortiz-Legg and Jimmy Paulding voted in favor of raising the base salary from $90,417 to $114,067 over two years. They argued that the raises were needed to attract good candidates in the future.

In typical fashion, county staff conducted a study of where the board of supervisors ranks in comparison to a select group of counties. With a monthly base salary of $7,534, SLO County was ranked slightly below the $8,064 monthly base salary Santa Barbara County supervisors receive. After the approved raise, SLO County’s maximum base salary will rise to $9,500 a month.

During public comment, about a dozen residents asked the supervisors not to take the raises because of the downturn in the economy and issues with the county operating in a deficit. Supervisor Ortiz-Legg said people encouraged her to vote for the raise.

Supervisor Peschong, who has not taken a raise since he was elected, said that people in North County had asked him to vote against the pay increase.

After multiple public speakers chastised Supervisor Paulding for running as a fiscal conservative and then changing his views after he was elected, Paulding said he would vote for the raises but would not take the increase in pay at this time.


Loading...
Subjects:
Related:


14 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

If the supervisors take a larger percentage of the county budget for themselves 2 things will happen. First all other county employees will now want more money, taking an even larger percentage of the county budget for themselves. Second services that we pay for via taxes will go down because they do not have enough in the budget to pay for those services. This is what happens when we elect the wrong people.


36

Need to bring back getting raises because you did your job especially well, such as you finished a project under budget or early, or saved the company money, right now the goal of governemnt employees is to find someone somewhere else making more than you and then using that as a reason to pay yourself more. Then the other person sees that and says they are making more so I need a riase and the cycle just continues. Plus a clasue that says when a dep[artment/city/county or such is already in the red no raises period.


40

Jimmy Paulding you lost my vote!!!


59

Glad to hear that. However, a much more important issue is why did Little Jimmy have your vote in the first place. This is what happens when people thoughtlessly vote for whomever is able to field the greatest number of large red political signs in the south county. Even paying slight attention, one should have expected this of him because this is what he did when on the AG city council.


43

Elections have consequences, when the South County voted in Jimmy Paulding, this is what you get!!!

This swing in the Board majority doesn’t end with just this, Adam Hill redux!!!


69

License to steal


60

Did they take the money from Public Works or just raise the debt ceiling? An example of Public Works savings might be the new road rating systems, a basis which starts with the current level of disrepair?


37

This shows you how people in Government think they are better than you and deserve more. To deny a 3% raise to the workers and then give themselves a 26% raise is total insanity and greedy they should be voted out next time


143

Just another slap in the face by our officials who were never supposed to be in politics as a lifetime career. Grandparents are ashamed. This is the reason my employees don’t get raises, it goes to these clowns instead. The roads are horrible, my kids find needles on the ground, smells like pee in every downtown, we’re over budget by millions of dollars, students are well below average, building permits and regulations are unattainable for small families, but these lazy crooks voted for their own raise.


This is what we get when all the LA and SF transplants get on our boards and bring their voting ways with them. We can see why there is a great flight of people leaving this area and the state as a whole. My family, tax dollars, and my business is included. Truly a shame what this County has became in a short 20 years.


100

Oh, gee, I’m shocked they did this.


67
1 2