Valdez school board creates payroll clerk job to add second review of payments

The Valdez City Schools Board of Education voted 5-0 Monday to create an Accounting & Payroll Clerk job without adding a position to the budget. The clerk would take on part of the payroll work the district's business services director has handled since 2018.

Business Services Director Susan Love asked for the change in a memo to the board. The current setup "does not conform with accounting best practices for internal control, where dual signatures and review for disbursements protect VCS against errors and/or fraud," Love wrote.

Until 2018, the district employed a full-time payroll technician who handled payroll from timecards to disbursement, according to the memo. Budget cuts then moved the duties to the director of business services. Love wrote that her predecessor's years of experience made that work. For her, payroll on top of budget management, insurance and food service "has not been manageable."

The clerk would review timecards and help process payroll, while some duties stay with the director so that internal control is ensured, the memo says. The new title sits beside the existing clerk job for paying bills and collecting money owed. The district will fill only one of the two.

The memo estimates added salary and benefits at $6,000 to $8,000. If the change takes effect in fiscal year 2027, it would be funded from undesignated reserves. Love called it the least expensive option, cheaper than hiring a payroll contractor or another full-time employee. One drawback, she wrote: the new position "does not relieve full scope of payroll processing from Director."

The same motion approved a revised salary schedule for non-teaching staff. It places the clerk one row below the old payroll technician, at $24.85 to $36.60 an hour. Love wrote that the job carries less responsibility than the old technician job and more than the current clerk job.