In a totally expected move, the Lampasas County Appraisal District Commissioner’s Court voted 4-1 to approve their new budget – which includes a 4% increase in salaries. Kudos to Mark Rainwater for voting against this nonsense and pointing out that LAST YEAR they raised the salaries 11%. Must be nice to get a 15% raise in two years. In my 35 years of working, I’m pretty sure that has never happened to me….because I’m a sap who has always worked in the private sector instead of having my lips clamped on the government titty.
Naturally they trotted out the tired old tripe about needing to overpay everyone so they don’t leave for greener pastures. It is an argument only a government official could believe. In the real world, if you post a “help wanted” ad and you get a LOT of people applying (like the LCAD recently did (5 resumes) and like the city of Lampasas did (54 resumes) when they created the Assistant City Manager position) that means your offered salary (AND BENEFITS) are plenty generous. It doesn’t matter what Austin or Dallas are doing down the road.
Comparing salaries to Austin or Round Rock or Georgetown is an idiotic endeavor. Yes, they might get paid more in those towns, but the cost of living is much higher and there are other negative externalities like traffic, noise and pollution.
Furthermore, you would think the price of “appraising stuff” would go DOWN over time, since these people have access to unprecedented amounts of information very easily now: Zillow, Redfin, drone images, Google Earth and many others have mountains of real-world data on prices that an appraiser from 20 years ago could only dream of.
Once again, the giant claw of government grabs more and more from the citizens. Anyone want to bet on the over/under for next year’s salary increase? I’ll go with over 4% yet again next year.