By VICKI BROWN
Colleton County Council voted unanimously during its meeting on April 12th to approve two separate pay raises for two groups of county employees – those who serve in Colleton County Fire-Rescue and those who serve at the Colleton County Memorial Library.
The pay raises will be implemented immediately.
According to county Administrator Kevin Griffin, pay raises for firefighter-paramedics at Colleton County Fire-Rescue were requested by the county’s Fire Commission and by administration because of the “severe EMT and Paramedic shortage the county is experiencing,” he said.
Colleton County currently has 16 paramedic/EMT positions open that need to be filled. Unfortunately, neighboring counties are experiencing shortages as well and have increased their pay to draw employees to their counties. This has left Colleton without enough paramedics throughout the county.
“Many days lately, Fire/Rescue is only able to run six or seven of our eight ambulance units due to the personnel shortage,” said Griffin. “The council approved a $2.14 raise per hour, the same given to Sheriff deputies (recently), as a stop gap measure until we explore this further in the upcoming budget.”
The new pay scale will annually cost the county $825,663 at the current rate, and the cost from April 11th through June 30th will be $174,659.49.
At the same meeting, requests were made by administration at the Colleton County Memorial Library on Hampton Street in Walterboro for employee pay increases.
The library raises were requested by the Library Board with existing and anticipated new state funds that the library is expected to receive.
Approval was given by council members for the library to pursue the pay raises with state funding. Details of these funding increases were not available.
