Andrews – The chairman of the Andrews ABC Board defended financial decisions made by the group since she took office last fall, following an article in the Feb. 17 edition of the Cherokee Scout.
During the Feb. 17 Andrews Board of Aldermen meeting, Bennie Jo McKinnon said she voted in favor of raises for two employees partly because they hadn’t received one since 2018.
“The town’s fair share, as Mayor (James) Reid put it, will be much less if we don’t retain employees and have constant turnover and overtime costs when the store is short an employee,” McKinnon said during the public comment portion of the meeting. “The full-time employee that received a raise will have been with the store for nine years in April. He’s been out sick three days in that time.
“Does that sound like an employee you want to lose, or one you’re lucky to keep when you don’t even offer health benefits for full-time employees?”
Aldermen recently appointed three Cherokee County Schools employees to the ABC board after the resignation of former board member Holly Christy, who accepted a position as the town’s attorney. After two citizens argued the new appointments created a conflict of interest, Reid and the aldermen explained their reasoning for the choices and expressed concerns regarding financial decisions made by the ABC board.
Reid said he does not agree with the pay rates for the store manager and finance officer, who each are paid more than what a great number of law enforcement officers throughout the county earn per hour.
Meanwhile, Alderman Jonathan Ellison – who manages the Dollar General in town – said the ABC manager’s pay rate of $18 per hour and the clerks’ starting pay rate of $12 per hour is not commensurate with the skill-set required to run the store.
McKinnon argued that Ellison’s comment is “demeaning and insulting to every employee at our ABC store and, frankly, to every clerk working in Cherokee County.” She said the pay rates were set at those amounts so the store could hire employees “to work full time with no [health] benefits.”
“At the end of the day, there is such a thing as maxing out [the pay] at a job,” Ellison said in response to McKinnon. “It just doesn’t pay any more because of the skill-set.”
The town’s administrator suggested that longevity in and of itself should not be the basis for continued pay raises.
“At the Town of Andrews, we have employees who have been here 20 years and make less than those employees,” Sandy Dobson said. “This ABC board, on a comparative basis, has been one of the lowest in sales anywhere for years. To increase the pay for an underperforming ABC store, I think that may be an issue.”
While McKinnon argued that employees are not responsible for the comparatively low sales numbers since they are not allowed to advertise per state law, Dobson pointed out that store staff closed early several times in the past, which impacts sales long term.
Addressing other financial decisions, Reid pointed out that the ABC board has been giving employees Christmas bonuses each year, with staff receiving amounts ranging from $100-$500 this past holiday. He also expressed concern about the store using an auditor from Rockingham, which has been the case for the past seven years, ever since Jack Frahmann was hired as the store’s finance officer.
“I think everybody should change auditors every few years, especially when there’s stuff like elderberry being sold out [of an ABC store] without taxes,” Reid said. “It needs to be above board and legal, and that’s all this board is trying to say.”
Reid was referring to a previous accusation that an employee had kept elderberry mixed with alcohol (such as moonshine) in the ABC store’s refrigerator during flu season and sold it to customers out of a vehicle in the parking lot. The mayor has previously stated that he would like the ABC board to hire a different auditor to review past audits to see if anything was overlooked.
The mayor also said he had a problem with Frahmann saying, “We don’t have to give the town anything,” in regard to the store’s profit distribution mandated by state law.
“If you spend every nickel of your profit every year, and I’ve heard that that’s what [they have tried to do] in the past, there is nothing to give to the town,” Reid said.
Dobson echoed that sentiment.
“What Jack said when we went to the meeting was that, ‘The Town of Andrews does not need our money and we make it where there’s no profit,’” Dobson recalled. “That’s not really the way it’s supposed to go.”
McKinnon said she isn’t trying to spend all of the store’s profits.
“We’re just trying to get things to where they run smoothly and keep people that are there,” she said.