Officers at understaffed Portage-Geauga juvenile detention center get raises
The Portage-Geauga Juvenile Detention Center is back up to full staff after being down to only one detention officer, and a salary so low that it wasn't drawing applicants.
Portage and Geauga County Commissioners had a joint meeting on Thursday to discuss the detention center in Shalersville, which serves youth from both counties. The center employs 10 detention officers, who are now responsible for about a dozen youth, plus interns.
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But Superintendent Joe Leeworthy said shortly after he took office last year, corrections officers began leaving the staff for higher paying jobs, including other county agencies. Because there were still about 8 youths in the center, administrative staff had to help with day-to-day detention tasks, he said.
The one detention officer still remaining, Leeworthy said, was making $14.29 per hour, which had been recently raised from $13.79 hourly, the first raise corrections officers had seen in nine years. The salary, he said, was so low that it wasn't drawing applicants to the vacant positions, Leeworthy said, and a worker earning that salary with two others in the household would qualify for food stamps.
Leeworthy did a salary survey of surrounding detention centers and those in rural areas, and found that corrections officers in Clermont County earn $19 per hour, those in Trumbull County earn $19.04 and those in Summit County earn $20 an hour. Corrections officers at the Portage County Jail make $23 per hour, he said.
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The employee who remained agreed to open the union contract early and set the wage at $20 per hour, which allowed the vacancies to be filled.
Geauga County Commissioner Tim Lennon questioned whether the detention center could stay within its budget even after the salaries had been adjusted. Leeworthy said he doesn't have numbers for next year yet, but the center is still well within its budget, in part because of the months they were paying only one detention officer.
"We had a three month period where we had only one officer, and all those salaries and benefits were not utilized," he said.
The center now has about a dozen youth, who stay at the center an average of a month before being sent home or to other facilities.
Reporter Diane Smith can be reached at 330-298-1139 or dsmith@recordpub.com.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Portage juvenile detention center officers get raises to help fill jobs
