County employees need to be aware that payroll creep might happen again, Barrow County Commissioner Eva Elder said at an elected officials meeting Friday.

But by the conclusion of the meeting, all the commissioners present – Elder, Steve Worley and Ben Hendrix – seemed resolved to fix the problem by the end of the year.

For two years in a row, county employees have received their last paycheck of the year before the year ended, leaving many without the check they expected at the end of December. With the county on 26 pay periods per year, every 11 years payroll creep occurs, meaning there would actually be 27 pay periods that year.

And because it was not fixed in 2008, it occurred again in 2009 and will continue to unless corrected.

Commissioners Hendrix and Worley said the county should be able to address the issue by the end of this year – whether it requires working with the payroll system or changing to a biweekly pay schedule.

Elder said the board had briefly considered changing its pay schedule in early 2009, but the issue was tabled and never brought back.

Chief Magistrate June Davis said in her 24 years working for the county, payroll creep never occurred until 2008.

She suggested it might be an issue with Kronos, the time management program.

When District Attorney Brad Smith said Barrow can’t be the only county that uses the program, Elder said she’d look into other municipalities that use it and how they’ve dealt with this issue.

"Maybe once we get that new CFO, the first item on the to-do list can be to get us off the horns of this Kronos," Hendrix said.

December is already a bad month for employees with tight budgets, Elder said, "even though they should have known they had received all 26 checks."

But the county is not able to call all employees’ creditors and explain why they might miss a payment, Hendrix said.

"I think it’s incumbent on us as leaders to get this resolved", he said.

"We’re going to go get it fixed," Worley promised.