Council Meeting Notes, July 17, 2023. 6:30 pm to 8:00.

Audio of the Meeting.

Pay and Benefits. the County Council has recognized the need to re-examine the employee compensation system to include salaries, grades, positions, benefits, et.al. It has been incremented over time with a series of “patches” and has created conditions that are not being perceived as being fair and equitable.  And given the constraints on the county’s ability to raise taxes, makes for an interesting challenge.  What has been missing in past change efforts to include requests for higher grades and new positions, has been a workload analysis linked to statutes, combined with an assessment of performance.

New Position – Commissioner Assistant at 42K a year. Commissioners (Wolpert, Pittman) pleaded that their part-time assistant position be converted to full-time so they can post the new position immediately. The current part-time position will remain for the rest of the year and the new position is to be immediately advertised.  I do not recall that the commissioners had a vote on adding the full-time position – assume this will happen at this Wednesday’s meeting.

Vote to Approve. After about a 90-minute discussion, the council voted to approve – 4 Yes (Hewett, Rudd, Kemp, Kirby), 2 No’s (Byrd, Swift-Powdrill), and 1 abstain (Redding). No discussion or details were presented as to the workload (the need). What is the current workload of the commissioners and how is this distributed among the three commissioners?

Need? The need for a full-time position emerged during the last few weeks with the appointment of Blake Wolpert.  Commissioners (Wolpert, Pittman) voted to contract with a former employee that served in the full-time admin assistant role, to help with their budget. Last fall (post-election) commissioners and council decided to re-structure the position to part-time and then create a new full-time HR director.

On-the-Job Training. When new council and commissioners are elected, I do not recall any that could hit the ground running. Some candidates generally show up for a few meetings to get a feel for the position which is not exactly good preparation.  And state statutes, along with the lack of SOPs, do not make learning about county operations, finance and budgeting an easy endeavor.   At a minimum, prospective candidates should review about 2-3 years of minutes of meetings to identify their tasks and responsibilities.  A review of the statutes identifying the requirements of the elected office would also be of value.

Budget.  The Circuit Court needed another 6K to pay for psychiatric services that are needed to assess the defendant’s ability to stand trial. This expense varies – $4,600 last year and 1$1K in 2021. The Coroner needed another $18,500 for autopsy services.