Some El Paso County workers are paid so little they qualified for food stamps, county officials say.

For a family of four, the cutoff for being eligible for food stamps is $27,564, Ironically, county workers who determine applicants’ eligibility for social services make less than that — $23,742 to $27,511, about 18 percent less than Teller County pays.

Other county workers also are underpaid, employee benefits manager Imad Karaki said.

The county’s average pay for 90 comparable jobs in a recent multi-agency survey is $54,955, compared to the city of Colorado Springs’ average of $72,129 Those jobs don’t include salaries of elected officials, such as county commissioners who are paid $87,300 annually, and City Council members who are paid $6,250 a year.

The comparison comes from a county analysis of data collected by Mountain States Employment Council, a personnel consulting firm that surveys public employee information.

The county’s average pay for its 1,882 full-time workers is $45,647, Karaki said. If the sheriff’s and district attorney’s offices are excluded, average annual pay shrinks to $41,704.

County workers haven’t had an across-the-board pay hike in years, causing wages to fall behind comparable agencies, said county spokesman Dave Rose.

The county estimates it would cost $35 million to make its pay scale competitive.

Rose said there’s “no chance” of catching up soon, because commissioners are facing a “whole host of other needs.”

Last week, commissioners took $550,000 from the general fund emergency reserve and the self-insurance fund to fix air conditioning in county buildings to protect against computer systems overheating. The county also faces a $150,000 bill after a storm damaged the courthouse.

Karaki’s analysis shows  gaps in pay between El Paso County and similar sized agencies for administrators, law officers, emergency dispatchers, child welfare workers, maintenance workers and software developers.

Another problem is rising health-care premiums which employees are being forced to bear, Rose said.

The city’s catch-up cost is only $9.2 million, Human Resources Director Ann Crossey said. Although the city has fallen behind other Front Range cities’ pay scales, Springs workers have received raises in three of the last four years.

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Members of a family that were displaced by a fire talk to firefighters after their home burned Monday morning. Photo by JERILEE BENNETT, THE GAZETTE

Jerilee Bennett