Employees seek nonrenewal of assistant's contract

A letter was sent on Thursday to Alpine County residents calling for the ouster of Assistant to the Board of Supervisors Judy Molnar.

Members of three groups, the Concerned Employees of Alpine County, the Concerned Citizens of Alpine County and the Concerned Deputy Sheriffs Association, issued the letter asking that residents support them in calling for the non-renewal of Molnar's contract.

The employees are in negotiations with Alpine County after the county lost an arbitration over longevity pay increases.

Alpine County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gunter Kaiser said Thursday he hadn't seen the letter yet.

He said the county is in closed door negotiations with its four different bargaining units and couldn't comment on the issue.

A Nov. 29, 2005, arbitrator's ruling will cost Alpine County at least $150,000 in longevity pay it failed to give 20 employees.

Employees claim Molnar has cost the county $235,000 in lawsuits and was the subject of a Grand Jury investigation. The assistant's contract expires in June.

Alpine County has a $7 million budget.

At issue is the memorandum of understanding between the county and two unions, the Alpine County Employees Association Miscellaneous Bargaining Unit and the Alpine County Deputy Sheriffs Association Law Enforcement Unit.

The agreement, which became effective July 15, 2003, tried to reform the way Alpine County compensated its employees for longevity.

According to the ruling, no one was happy with the old way, in which employees who were regularly promoted would end up not receiving longevity pay, because their accumulated time was tied to their time at a particular pay range, not to their total time.

Negotiators tried to find a way to tie longevity pay to actual time in service, so that an employee who worked 10 years would receive a pay increase, no matter how many times they'd been promoted.

However, county negotiators told the unions the longevity rules could not be applied retroactively.