The County Commission has been working to address many issues in an effort to improve Elmore County. Some of these issues include creating and passing an FY18 Budget, revising the Personnel Policies and Procedure manual, and planning for our County Administrator to retire October 31 of this year. I want to share some thoughts and outcomes of these particular items.
I first want to share a couple of things that in-part influence my decisions on these and other issues that come before the Commission.
I can’t speak for my fellow Commissioners, but I think they would agree, we want to make decisions on how we manage the business of the Commission that will result in more efficient operations. Over the last 10 months I have evaluated the operations of many areas of our county government, and of course, this has been done through the eyes of someone that has owned and operated a business for many years.
There are areas where our government is operating efficiently, and then, there are areas where we need improvements.
Another motivating influence is that we must prioritize the expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars because we have very limited funds on which to operate. Pressure continues to be put on these limited dollars because of the rapid growth Elmore County is still experiencing; the more people we have in our county, the more services that are needed. All of which costs money. Evaluating these expenditures will be done based on my strong belief in small government, and that government’s primary obligation to its citizens is to work to provide for them those things the general population cannot reasonably and independently provide for themselves in order to enjoy and maintain a civil society and a decent quality of life.
These are three of the many areas we have been focusing on in the recent months:
The Budget:
The budget we adopted was created by working with our department heads and with the elected officials whose agencies the Commission is tasked with, in-part, funding such as the Probate Judge, Sheriff and Revenue Commissioner. We have worked to provide for the needs, they determined their agencies have, that the citizens of Elmore County elected them to operate.
This resulted in changes in many areas throughout the budget in which we reprioritized the expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars. One of the outcomes of our efforts has been to fund the Sheriff’s Office request for additional staff. This will assist in the Sheriff’s deputy’s response to an increase number of calls for service in the county. This will also allow for additional courtroom security which is needed to better protect our judges and those citizens in the courtrooms.
Personnel Policies and Procedures:
Keep in mind we have five new Commissioners this term, but one thing we discovered early on is the current Personnel Policies and Procedure manual is more 14 years old and job descriptions/classifications have not been reviewed for more than 10 years. This resulted in a committee being established to revise these policies and procedures. The commission has already made some job classification/description revisions at the request of some department heads and elected officials, and we will be reviewing all job descriptions very soon. Many of these related issues that need to be addressed are not simple or pleasant tasks with which to deal, but we cannot allow these difficult issues to be overlooked any longer. The areas in need of attention have not just become areas of concern, reviewing these policies and job descriptions will take some time. We cannot fix all problems at one time, but we have got to start somewhere and are currently working on making the needed revisions.
Government Operations and Transition Plan:
Historically, a county administrator’s responsibility could include a wide range of areas; facilities management, public information officer, safety program, budget creation and management, and managing the commission’s administrative staff. As a result of Elmore County’s continued growth, some of these individual responsibilities have become so large they have been assigned to our Highway Department. Also, a few years back a new position was created to assume a portion of the accounting duties of the administrator.
Several months ago our current county administrator made the commission aware of her intention to retire October 31, 2017; next week.
In order for us to operate Elmore County more efficiently we must capture every opportunity to affect positive change.
With our administrator retiring, we have looked at ways we can utilize the talents of the current staff in which the Elmore County tax payers’ dollars have already been invested and distribute these Administrator duties to current employees.
We created a plan that includes adding the job title of Chief Operations Officer to our current County Engineer with the job duties of County Engineer being retained and absorbing a portion of the County Administrator duties. The remaining duties of the Administrator will be divided among two other senior staff members who will be assigned new job titles. By do this we will better utilize the talents of current staff, reduce the workforce by one senior staff member by not replacing the Administrator position, streamline daily operations, reduce our vehicle fleet inventory and save more than $30,000 per year.
I think by breaking the “Government Mold” of hiring another administrator and looking to the “Private Sector” for ways to manage a growing county, we can use the talents already on staff and not have to invest in hiring and training another Administrator.
This is only an update on the things we are currently working on, but there are more to come. I appreciate your support in my effort to serve Elmore County.
Bart