Dinwiddie County will implement an employee classification and compensation system in the fall that will provide more competitive salaries.

The Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 Tuesday to approve the plan. It will cost the county an additional $607,990, which has been included in the fiscal year 2009 budget.

Supervisors cut $1 million from the school budget in part to provide higher salaries to county employees, who earn less than school employees, some supervisors said.

Currently, most of the 216 county employees are paid less than others in comparable localities, according to a salary study conducted by Springsted Inc.

Supervisor Michael W. Stone said when he was elected to the board five years ago, employee salaries were among the lowest in the region.

"Residents did not trust the local government, the employees' morale was low and there was little accountability," he said.

If the board did not approve the salary plan, salaries would remain below market, the county would lose employees to higher-paying localities and economic-development projects would take longer, he said.

Donald L. Haraway, vice chairman of the board, abstained from voting because of concerns about the study. He said the salary survey included several localities outside the Tri-Cities area with higher average median household incomes and other factors that skewed the study's data. He said the data for seven of those localities should have been taken out.

"There really is no comparison with these seven localities," he said, adding that it was unfair to ask residents to foot the bill.

Supervisor Harrison A. Moody, who was out of state at a convention, relayed through Chairman John Talmage that he wanted to defer the vote until next month to allow time to remove data on Chesterfield from the study.

Chesterfield's median household income is $58,537, compared with Dinwiddie's $41,582. The study also included New Kent and Powhatan counties, which have median household incomes of more than $53,000.
Contact Juan Antonio Lizama at (804) 649-6513 or jlizama@timesdispatch.com.