The men and women serving at the top of the county may soon see some larger figures on their paychecks.

A subcommittee established to examine the pay rates of Cass County’s elected officials presented their salary recommendations to their fellow commissioners on Thursday, during their regular meeting that evening.

The three-person committee, consisting of Commissioners E. Clark Cobb, Bernie Williamson and Robert Ziliak, recommended a resolution that would give the officials a 2.5 percent pay raise, spread out over the next two years.

The committee worked for several weeks to determine these numbers, analyzing the salaries of officials working in 10 other Michigan counties, all with similar demographics to Cass.

“We took the spreadsheets of all those salaries for all of those positions and we averaged them to get a sense of what that number would be,” Williamson said. “Then we multiplied our existing salaries by the 2.5 factor to see where things fell. All of those positions, with the exception of the drain commissioner position, were above the average, in varying amounts.”

To compensate for the lower than average Drain Commissioner position, the committee recommended that it receive a 3 percent bump over the next two years, to bring it more in line with other counties.

The committee is still in the process of discussing salary changes for nonunion positions, and is close to coming to a consensus for recommendations, Cobb said.

The members said that by spreading these raises over two years, the county should have an easier time incorporating them into the budget for the next couple fiscal years.

“It helps the elected officials understand what their salaries will be and how that will affect their own budgets,” Williamson said. “It’s a basis for discussion for the nonunion ones as well.”

These pay raises will be up for approval by the Board of Commissioners during their next meeting, on Dec. 18.