KERSHAW COUNTY, S.C. — The Kershaw County Sheriff's Office has begun raising salaries in an effort to recruit and retain people.
“To me, retention is more important than recruiting," Kershaw County Sheriff Lee Boan said. "I'd rather keep the good people we have than try to dump a bunch of money into bringing people here.”
"I started doing some research on agencies around us and found we are the lowest paid around, which is entirely different than just a year earlier,” Boan said.
Boan says it was needed to make sure he keeps people in the department.
“The state went up again, this makes it two years in a row they went up a lot on their salary so they kinda put us at a disadvantage when it comes to recruiting," Boan said. "Recruiting is already hard enough as it is, but with the lower salary, that isn’t helping anything.”
Boan says the county budget had already been approved so the funding had to be found through the sheriff's budget.
“Ultimately, I had to make a decision to freeze 3 positions that are currently vacant and had been vacant for a while in order to free up some salary over to our guys,” Boan said.
The move brings the starting salary for a patrol deputy to $50,000, and all current employees will see an increase based on their rankings.
Boan says the move doesn’t solve all of their problems.
“Were going to have to come up with some plans going forward because i need more deputies," Boan said. "Our county is growing, population is growing, and I am going to need more deputies in the near future and a competitive salary."
Boan says the salary increase will go into effect immediately.