Seems we may have confused some folks last week with our mention of the supervisors’ vote to raise the maximum salary for the board which will be sworn in next January.

Just to be clear, the board authorized a maximum salary for members of the incoming board and the chairman of $15,000 and $18,000, respectively. This process is dictated by Virginia Code and had the supervisors not acted before July 1, supervisors’ pay for the next four years would have remained at the current $12,000 and $15,000 levels.

So what it boils down to is this: The current board has established the salary for the new board.  This does not mean the new board must accept this salary.  The new board could choose to go below the maximum $3,000 increase authorized by the current board.

That being said, it’s worth noting that the proposed new maximums represent a 25 percent raise for supervisors and a 20 percent raise for the chairman. And while there was talk of pegging raises for supervisors to raises for employees, that is not required by the resolution. It’s also difficult to imagine anything approaching such percentages being considered for employees’ salary increases during the next four years.

Last week we also noted that Henrico and Chesterfield pay their supervisors far, far more than Goochland pays their board members. But Henrico and Chesterfield counties have many more citizens and each board member in those counties has far more constituents than do Goochland supervisors.

Some other counties pay their supervisors less. For example, Fluvanna pays its supervisors $7,200, its vice chair $7,754 and its chairman $8,307 according to Fluvanna County Administrator William P. Scudder.

And across the river in Powhatan, supervisors currently earn $12,000 yearly and the chairman makes $15,000. According to Powhatan County Administration, the board there did not raise their maximum salaries for the supervisors who will be sworn in next January.

So there you have it. Raising Goochland supervisors’ salaries next year, or any time in the next four years is now an option, not a given.

But considering the weak economy and the budget cuts that have been made it seems to this writer that the wiser choice for the time being might have been to leave well enough alone, keeping Goochland supervisors’ pay where it is today.