Public health board recommends wage increase

    The Washington County Public Health Board unanimously voted to recommend a 1 percent pay raise for the 26 public health employees at its monthly meeting Tuesday morning. The recommendation goes to the County Board of Supervisors for approval.

    Peggy Wood, the public health fiscal administrator, said the cost of giving the public health employees a 1 percent pay raise would be $13,000.

    Jim Miksch, who was there representing the board of supervisors, said that a 1 percent raise doesn?t seem like much but that it is better than nothing at all. He also said most county departments end up spending less money than what they were allotted, so that finding the money to pay for the wage increase may be easier than the board thought.

    Public Health Director Edie Nebel addressed the board about the progress on designing the future public health building. She said that the architectural firm Solum and Lang, LLC will submit a drawing of the new building to go out for bids by the end of March.

    ?We have a design that we have started working on already,? said Nebel. ?It?s really exciting to see our building, even on a piece of paper.?

    The future building will be divided into two halves to separate the medical half from the administrative half.

    ?One side of the building will be clinical and it will have our dental hygienist?s office, a lab to measure heights and weights, the WIC clinic (Women, Infants and Children) and our immunizations,? said Nebel. ?The other half will be administrative and staff offices.?

    The earliest the building could be constructed would be this spring. However, Nebel said that even with a final blueprint and a willing builder, public health still has to find the rest of the money.  

    A federal grant of $500,000 is being sought by public health to defray the cost of constructing a new building, which is estimated at $2 million. Nebel told the board that public health also applied for a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). However, she was informed that Washington County may be too wealthy to receive the grant.  

For the full story, see the Jan. 13 edition of The Washington Evening Journal