County council can’t regain lost opportunity with engineer’s pay

Since the departure of Jason Heile as county engineer a few things have become apparent; applicants for the county engineer position expect higher pay than the county allots for the position and Heile’s 14 years of experience is going to be hard to replace.

The realization comes too little and too late as the council reached out to Heile with an offer of $71,000 to return to his position with the county. The council also added the caveat that Heile would receive raises over the next two years that would bring the pay up to $76,000 annually.

But citing the disrespect it would show his current employer, Heile declined the offer Tuesday morning.

The offer materialized during the county council meeting Monday night. Dubois County Highway Superintendent Steve Berg asked the council to raise the county engineer salary to assist his department and the county commissioners in finding a new engineer. He presented three recent applications from licensed and unlicensed engineers whose pay expectations exceeded the county’s allotted salary.

The request prompted a discussion about the overall pay rates for county employees. Citing his concern about the fairness of raising one employee’s pay thousands of dollars, Council president Greg Kendall told the council he felt it would be in the county’s best interest to hire a firm to conduct a study of the county’s pay rates to determine if they were industry standard.

The idea didn’t get much play as other members of the council pointed out they could conduct their own research on the pay for similar positions. Councilman Shane Lindauer provided information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and additional records from a national website concerning the average pay for certain locations in the United States.

Heile announced he had been offered the county engineer position in Daviess County earlier this year. An eleventh hour scramble failed to materialize among the county council members to attempt to keep him in Dubois County.

Heile had requested the council raise his salary from $58,400 to $65,000 — closer to the $76,000 the average civil engineer is earning in Dubois County according to a site Councilman Lindauer used for comparison. But his request to raise his salary prior to the 2014 budget approval faded away during the single day budget session and Heile decided he needed to find something new to support his pregnant wife and two children.

The offer from Daviess County came with a $75,000 annual salary and Heile felt he couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

A month later the county is wading into projects with a contracted engineer who, according to County Highway Superintendent Steve Berg, is basically being retrained for Heile’s position. Additionally, Berg has found he has to fill in for the now vacant engineering position.

“Steve and I attended a meeting about the Huntingburg overpass planning today,” Commissioner Larry Vollmer told the council. “Normally, Jason would attend those.”

With Heile declining the county’s offer, Berg now faces hiring from the pool of three applicants. The council gave him and the commissioners approval to offer a salary up to the $71,000 annual salary offered Heile.