October 16, 2018
During Monday’s Marshall County Commissioners meeting, Commissioner Kurt Garner bought forth a discussion of the County Council removing the funding for an engineer in the Highway budget for 2019.
Garner said, “I saw where council pulled the engineers position out of the budget for 2019 which leaves us with a supervisor role and that still doesn’t address the administration at the highway department.” He asked is the council was dictating to the commissioners that they have to create a superintendents position?
Garner said the county doesn’t have a job description that identifies the administrative structure at the highway. He asked if the commissioners should consider making some changes.
The supervisor’s role was a position shared jointly with an administrative position that was previously held by Lorrie Baker. Baker retired from the county almost a year ago and over 2018 Commissioners Garner and Mike Delp worked feverously to hire an engineer for the highway department. While the job opening was advertised for months the county wasn’t able to fill the vacancy due to the salary range.
Garner said, “Really we only have half of what we need.” He went on to say, “The council has made it clear, that with their raise in the salary. That the salary reflects the superintendent’s position, they also made it clear by taking the engineer out of the budget that the supervisor in the budget is the superintendent.”
Garner suggested cleaning up the issue by adopting a job description for the superintendent’s position in the highway department instead of the supervisor’s job description that is currently being used. He said, “You have to have the language and the job description that goes with the position that the council has created.”
Commissioner Mike Delp agreed with Garner.
The County Attorney said the position prior to Lorrie and Jason was a superintendent, Neal Haeck with a job description. He suggested looking at that for direction.
Garner said the HR Consultants created an Interim Superintendent’s job description and the council increased the pay to a superintendent’s position while Jason Peters is working off the supervisor’s job description.
The commissioners will review the job description and discuss the change at their meeting on November 5th.