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Show County Officials Due Pay Increase Soon Because of Iron county's unusual un-usual assessed valuation situation situa-tion new legislation approved by the 1953 state legislature granting grant-ing salary increase to county employees em-ployees poses a perplexing problem prob-lem for the commissioners of Iron county. With Iron county officers, including in-cluding sheriff, assessor, clerk, recorder and treasurer receiving a salary of only $2500 per year, everyone has been aware for a long time that these officers have been way under paid. However, How-ever, under the new legislation, which classifies the counties by assessed valuation it would allow an increase of $1000 to $2000 each. There is no doubt but that an increase will be allowed as soon as the Board of County Commissioners Commis-sioners can take action on the matter, but the question that the commissioners must decide is just how much of an increase should be made. Iron County with an assessed valuation of $31,000,000.00 is placed in the third class of counties, in which the minimum salaries are set at from $3500 to $3800, and the maximum at $5500 for each officer. Other counties in this category are Cache, Carbon, Davis and Tooele, all of which have much larger populations and higher local assessed valuations, valua-tions, which means that the officers offi-cers of those counties would have a greater responsibility of service than those of Iron county. A major portion of Iron County's Coun-ty's assessed valuation is the result of, mine assessments which come through the state tax office. of-fice. Counties with populations similar to that of Iron County, includirrg Sanpete, Sevier, Summit, Sum-mit, Uintah and Millard, are In the fourth class, and Washington Washing-ton county with a larger population, pop-ulation, but slightly lower local assessed valuation, is in the fifth class. The minimum salary in the fourth class is the same as (Continued on Back Page) COUNTY PAY (Continued from Page One) Iron County officials now receive re-ceive and the maximum is set at the same figure as the minimum for third class counties. Consequently it seems reasonable reason-able that salaries in Iron County be set at a figure commensurate with the population and the assessed as-sessed valuation and not alone on the valuation. It is expected that Iron County may be moved into the second class next year, along with Utah, Weber and Box Elder counties, which would jump the maximum salary for county officials to $5500, although al-though the amount of service required re-quired would probably remain near the level of fourth class counties. Certainly local officers should and will receive a substantial increase in-crease in pay, but the commissioners commis-sioners admit that they have a difficult task before them to determine de-termine just what would be a fair salary base. The problem will be considered and probably settled at the regular April meeting meet-ing of the County commissioners commission-ers on Monday, April 13. |