Chautauqua County managers who are on the high pay end will be getting a raise next year.

On Wednesday, the county legislature voted 11 to 8 to give high end managers a 1.5% raise.

Before Wednesday’s meeting, the local law was reviewed by both the Administrative Services and Audit and Control committees. Administrative Services did not pass the legislation, while Audit and Control did. Neither committee vote mattered because the full legislature’s approval was required for it to be enacted.

The local law is believed to impact 12 high end managers and will cost $16,990, assuming all 12 are granted the full 1.5% pay increase.

Voting against the resolution were legislators Robert Bankowski, D-Dunkirk; Elisabeth Rankin, R-Jamestown; Bob Scudder, R-Fredonia; Christine Starks, D-Fredonia; Lisa Vanstrom, R-West Ellicott;

Bill Ward, R-Mayville; Paul Whitford, D-Jamestown; and Robert Whitney, D-Jamestown.

Before the vote, Bankowski stated the time is wrong for a pay hike. “I don’t doubt that our supervisory staff has not gone above and beyond and have been working very diligently and hard during the pandemic,” he said. “I just feel that granting these raises right now with so many uncertainties in our upcoming year, I’ll be voting no.”

County Legislator Ken Lawton disagreed, saying it’s not a raise. “It’s a management of salary ranges. It’s something that the legislature regularly does, if not every year. … It’s an effort to stay in line with inflation and it’s a pay scale that will retain and attract employees,” he said.

Rankin stated that she agreed with Bankowski. “I think it’s really difficult to add any kind of increase to the taxpayers. It takes away nothing for the hard work these managers have done,” she said.

In October, the county legislature authorized a 3% raise for all other county managers when it authorized the 2021 budget. County officials shared in committee meetings that raise will affect 98 managers.

In unrelated business, it was announced that Legislator Terry Niebel, R-Sheridan, had pulled his motion to support Sheriff James Quattrone’s position that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order limiting non-essential private residential gatherings in unenforceable. Niebel had introduced the motion by himself and did not say why he decided to pull it.