BUCKHANNON – The City of Buckhannon is reviving the Revenue Review Committee to evaluate raises across the city’s various departments.

Mayor Robbie Skinner told the Consolidated Public Works Board on July 28 that the committee will be responsible for determining if raises are needed and will then make a recommendation to city council.

“This committee is going to be looking specifically are our wages across the city, within all departments,” Skinner said. “We are going to be asking the revenue review committee to look at our employee wages across the board. With the level of inflation that we have experienced in our society this past year, we have some folks that I simply don’t know how they’re making it.”

The committee will make their determinations after each department gives them the necessary information.

“We need to have all the information, from all the different departments, to evaluate these changes,” Skinner said. “Once their work is complete, it will then go back to each individual department and then finally over to city council for consideration.”

The committee is hoping to have a recommendation for council by October.

“We recognize this could be a significant chunk of change that’s going to need to come out of our city coffers for this,” Skinner said. “We also recognize that some of our boards could have to look at some rate increases because of it.

“We like to say a lot that we have the least expensive services out there, but our employees get crunched and they share the burden of us being able to boast that we have the least expensive services. We want to be fair to our employees because we don’t have an organization or services without our employees.”

The committee will have to determine how to balance giving raises while maintaining the funds needed for everyday operations.

“We want to make sure we’re not taking capital out of the operating of the plants and that we don’t use the money to turn the lights on every day to pay the extra salaries,” Skinner said. “We need to do both. We need to make sure those facilities are well taken care of and maintained for the future so that we can retain our utility departments, because that’s the best scenario for our residents.”