HOLLIDAYSBURG — The filling of two vacant judicial seats in Blair County has already started to generate requests to address what’s predicted to be an increase in court work.

The county salary board recently turned down President Judge Wade A. Kagarise’s request to fill a vacant part-time administrative technician position in preparation for 2026 when the bench is expected to return to five full-time judges for the first time since 2021.

While the administrative technician job has been vacant since late 2021, Kagarise tried to convince fellow salary board members to affirm his option to fill the job before the end of 2025 year so the person hired could be ready to assist with increased workload in January.

But fellow salary board members — commissioners Dave Kessling, Amy Webster and Laura Burke and Deputy Controller Angela Wagner — voted “no” after it was pointed out that the part-time non-union administrative technician job at $12.75 an hour wasn’t included in the 2025 budget.

The salary board also turned down the judge’s request for as many as 8,000 tipstaff hours at $13.75 an hour.

While the board agreed that the judge can create a pool with as many as 20 tipstaffs to work as needed, they also said the tipstaff work was budgeted in 2025 for 6,500 hours — so it should be no greater than that.

The rein on the county’s budget surfaced as Kagarise spoke of his desire to prepare for the expanded bench and shore up personnel shortages.

“We’re already handling a lot of trials, disposing of a lot of cases,” Kagarise advised the salary board. “And we cannot keep doing that if we don’t have tipstaffs helping the judges.”

When the judge proposed hiring an administrative technician toward the end of the 2025, Kessling again referred to the lack of money and to significant pay increases that have been approved for non-union and union employees.

“When this board sits in front of you and says ‘we don’t have the money,’ we don’t have the money because we’ve invested in our people at historical levels,” Kessling said.

He said the board’s actions this year have bumped up select salaries as much as $18,000 to $20,000 annually, boosted pay by $3 an hour in other cases and generated never-seen-before percentage increases in pay. The most recent approvals were for 18.7%.

“We’ve done something no other board has done before,” Kessling said.

When commissioners built the 2025 budget, they allocated money for pay increases based on an in-house effort to identify competitive pay levels and stem employee turnover that’s drawn complaints over the years.

Subsequently, they granted pay raises, effective Jan. 4, for 115 nonunion employees in 10 county departments.

On July 3, commissioners followed through with approving an agreement with the United Mine Workers of America, retroactive to Jan. 4, that updated salary levels by setting new starting hourly pay rates and for some employees above starting rates, by awarding 18.7% raises.

The actions — as reflected in documents available to the Altoona Mirror after it submitted a Right-to-Know request — included the following:

— The new hourly starting pay for a deputy sheriff increased from $15.52 an hour to $19.35 an hour. For a deputy sheriff making $17.51 an hour, the increase translated to a new pay rate of $20.79 an hour.

— The starting pay for a parole and probation officer became $19.35 an hour based on the July 3 action.

— The starting pay for a correctional case manager at the county prison increased from $11.58 an hour to $15.16 an hour. This job has long been recognized as one that failed to draw applications because of its low pay.

— Support staff personnel in various departments, generally making $11 to $12 an hour, were assigned new starting pay levels of no less than $13.09 an hour.

— Starting hourly pay for a 911 telecommunicator trainee was set at $17.55. For a more experienced 911 telecommunicator, the 18.7% raise translated to a new pay rate of $28.88 an hour, up from $24.32 an hour.

At its July 17 meeting, the salary board also considered and approved new rates for a few employees based on applying the updated pay policy.

Chief Clerk Alicia Tiracave was among those assigned a new pay level of $82,791 annually, retroactive to Feb. 4 when she was hired at $78,004 annually. Tiracave succeeded Chief Clerk Sherrie Socie, who was making $82,791 annually when she left that job to return to her prior job with the Blair County Planning Commission.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.