Marshall County Commissioner Kurt Garner presented the county council members Monday morning with a proposed job description change pertaining to the highway administrator’s position.
Garner explained it is the thought to change the highway administrator’s position to a county engineer/director position. The highway administrator’s position will become vacant at the end of the year with the retirement of Laurie Baker on Dec. 29. Garner said the addition of an engineer to the highway department would be beneficial.
“As the job description is written, the hiring of a licensed engineer would be permitted,” said Garner. “The duties in that description also include communication with the public and comprehensive road planning. Both Commissioner [Mike] Delp and I feel that a greater level of expertise would be immeasurably beneficial in this position for a number of reasons. The most important of these are the development of long-range planning, estimating, best practices with construction, having trained eyes on increasingly more drainage issues, and maybe most importantly to the public is the responsiveness to those we are elected to serve.”
He went on to say that Baker and Highway Supervisor Jason Peters have made significant strides in rebuilding the highway department with equipment and projects.
“That is not what is at issue. The question for us to consider is, ‘do we strengthen the highway department by expanding the qualifications and expertise in the role that will be vacated at the end of this year?’ I believe the benefit in doing this far outweighs the cost.”
Garner said consultant Waggoner, Irwin and Scheele offered two job descriptions to be a part of the expanded role which brought to light the county engineer/director position. They also provided a salary range for this position of just over $62,000 to just under $77,000.
In the end of the hour-long discussion, and hearing differing opinions from the three commissioners in attendance, the county council did approve the job description by a vote of 4-3 with Heath Thornton, Jon Van Vactor, Bill Githens, and Penny Lukenbill voting for the change with Jim Masterson, Don Morrison and Judy Stone voting against the change. The salary range was also approved by a 4-3 vote with Heath Thornton, Jim Masterson, Jon Van Vactor and Bill Githens with the supporting vote and Don Morrison, Judy Stone and Penny Lukenbill with the dissenting vote.
With the change of the job description, the county commissioners will now need to re-advertise for the position as the terms under the old job description were advertised for hire. Three applications were received under the old job description. This will delay the process in getting someone into the position by the time Baker leaves the office. The assistant clerk recently retired so the highway department could be without two people at the start of the year.
A large contingency of highway department personnel attended Monday morning’s county council meeting and they all were commended for their hard work at the highway department as differences are being made.
The entire conversation can be heard during the Maximum Impact program on Sunday, Dec. 17 at noon.
