EPHRATA - Grant County employees won't see pay raises in 2011.

Grant County Commissioner Richard Stevens told Teamsters Union representatives the county is doing better than last year, but not well enough to offer employees pay raises. The county decided not to give any employee, including elected officials, pay raises this year.

As part of the negotiations with the county's union groups, the commissioners promised to revisit the county's economic situation in the middle of the year to see if there were any changes.

The county is about 3 percent below the amount of money it expected to pay by the end of May, but Stevens said the amount is likely to change.

"You have to keep in consideration that $700,000 insurance payment hasn't come out. It doesn't come out until September," he said. "We expect to see about 2.5 to 4 percent this time of year."

The county's sales tax revenue is about $40,000 higher than last year, but the figure is skewed because of a $400,000 refund the county needed to make to the state Department of Revenue, Stevens said. The refund caused the county to adjust its budget in June 2010.

"So we're ahead, we got more money than last year, but we're still lower than last year's projections," he said. "I hope we're seeing a trend line, but we really won't see that until you go out about five, six months."

The county's property taxes, which also affect the current expense fund, are above projections, Stevens said.

Salaries are also close to the budgeted amount, Stevens said.

Overall the county is doing pretty well, and is likely to have about 1 percent, or about $350,000, more than it budgeted to have, he said.

"It's not a lot over," he said. "I think things are looking better. I don't know if they're looking better for doing something right now, but they're certainly looking better as far as next year."

The commissioners examined whether to add an additional raise, Stevens said. The problem is any raise done in the middle of the year won't be added to the budget until next year. For example if the county decided to increase salaries 2 percent in 2011 and 2 percent in 2012 it would be calculated as a 4 percent increase on the 2012 budget.

"Now we're up 4 percent and that reflects a lot of money in the end of the year," he said. "If you look at total benefits and wages they come up close to $24 million out of that total budget ... Our economy is still very fragile, but we're getting stronger."

Stevens wants to avoid having more layoffs, saying it doesn't make sense. He added he hopes the county is able to raise salaries.

Teamsters representative Ken Pinney was glad the county seems to have a solid foundation, saying it would have been nice if the situation had changed during the first half of the year, but it hasn't.

"It's great that things are solidifying and stabilizing," he said.

When Stevens was asked whether the county was considering a voter-approved sales tax increase, the commissioner replied the possible tax increases need to go to new items rather than existing programs.

"We have talked about it a number of times, but the last time there was a really serious talk about it was when the cities came in and they were complaining about the lack of police and the prosecutor's office not charging a lot of the misdemeanor stuff in juvenile," he said.

The commissioners said if the 14 cities in the county brought a request to put the 0.3 of 1 percent law and justice sales tax increase on the ballot, they would, Stevens said.

"If you can't get buy-in from those folks ... it's just going to fail," he said. "Right now, getting people to vote for a tax increase is pretty tough."

If the increase passed on the ballot, Stevens said the law doesn't allow the revenue to be spent on core programs, which are losing people.

"It's not something I can say, 'OK, we'll give the sheriff an extra $1 million out of this, so they can hire a few people and raise wages just for the regular program,'" he said. "That's not what it's for. They can go out here and hire a drug team or get a gang force. They could do that, but they couldn't put any of that money over in the administration, raise wages or anything of that nature."

He also pointed out about 40 percent of the money will go to the cities.