Elected officials discuss employee wages, bridge updates at monthly meeting

By Tay­lor Kaser –

November’s elected offi­cials meet­ing Mon­day kicked off with County Recorder Dixie Shin­aberry com­ment­ing that some county depart­ments have given raises and bonuses to their employ­ees. Shin­aberry ques­tioned this in light of the county’s finan­cially strapped posi­tion. She expressed the need for county employ­ees to all work together.

“I have girls that are not even at the pay scale that they’re sup­pose to be,” said Clerk of Courts Vanessa Mills, “so I will do a cost of liv­ing for my employ­ees.” Bonuses given to her employ­ees for the first time last year came from the extra funds that her office has went out to get in titles, not from the gen­eral fund, she said.

“I’m pleased to give the girls a raise,” Mills stated, “and should I do a bonus this year; I would be hon­ored to do that. I always respect employ­ees, and that’s what they come to work for.”

Shin­aberry com­mented that when she asked about giv­ing a bonus sev­eral ago, she was told not to. But Mills stated that she spoke with County Audi­tor Mary Holtrey and Pros­e­cu­tor Charles How­land had told her it was allowed. She reit­er­ated that she has never used gen­eral fund money or funds from other depart­ments for bonuses.

Cur­rently there is no stan­dard­ized pay scale at the cour­t­house. Com­mis­sioner Tom Harden explained that a scale was con­sid­ered a few years, but it was not accepted by all elected officials.

There was dis­cus­sion as to weather the term “bonus” was appro­pri­ate or if another name should be used in its place.

How­land related when he had given a “bonus” to his employ­ees in 2009. He explained that after the exit of one of his employ­ees the spot was left vacant and the other employ­ees helped to pick up the slack, with­out any com­plaint, said Howland.

Due to sav­ings from the vacant posi­tion, How­land said that his office was able to return $20,000 back to the gen­eral fund. He noted that he take some of the saved funds and used it as a reward for his employ­ees that had worked so hard.

He stated that elected offi­cials can give raises, for exam­ple to their employ­ees, but there are very strict rules.

In infra­struc­ture updates, County Engi­neer Randy Bush stated that the recent weather and some issues with the con­struc­tion com­pany, has put the Co. Rd. 9 bridge project behind sched­ule. The paving is fin­ished and he antic­i­pates that the bridge should be done before Thanksgiving.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Board of Devel­op­men­tal Dis­abil­i­ties attended the meet­ing and dis­cussed the new scan­ning sys­tem in place at Whet­stone Industries.

Busi­ness Man­ager Lyn­d­sey Keesee explained the sys­tem will be an effi­cient way on depart­ments to cut down on their paper­work stor­age while still pre­serv­ing all of the doc­u­ments digitally.

In answer to a ques­tion about safety, Keesee explained that their oper­a­tions con­form to all HIPA reg­u­la­tions and that employ­ees are reg­u­larly reminded about the impor­tance of not exam­in­ing documents.

Judge Robert Hick­son, Jr. expressed the need for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion of the county’s con­tin­gency plans for depart­ments in case of an emer­gency or disaster.

Judge Howard Hall expressed everyone’s desire to see the com­ple­tion of the new court­room. He explained that the addi­tion will aid in the alle­vi­a­tion of con­ges­tion and add to court safety.

In ref­er­ence to the mov­able jury box in the court­room, Hall said, ”The sit­u­a­tion, very sim­ply is: we were given a space that was already there, and we had to design a court­room in that space. We had to design a court­room, not just for the space avail­able, but for the secu­rity aspect.”

He explained that he and Judge Hick­son are the only judges in the state that han­dle all divi­sions with more than one judge at the com­mon pleas level. In the cur­rent court­room, Hall explained that there is lit­tle space to accom­mo­date every­one involved in the pro­ceed­ings. He explained the mov­able box will allow the court to make the best use of the space avail­able, since it will be pos­si­ble to move the jury box out of the way when it isn’t in use.

He also reported that the court has seen an increase of econ­omy related crimes, like bur­glar­ies for example.

For the com­mis­sion­ers updates, Com­mis­sioner Tom Whis­ton noted that they have been work­ing on a new health­care offer for county employ­ees. He also reported that usage of the web fil­ter­ing sys­tem has been post­poned until after the election.

Harden related that the county has received grant monies to con­duct sewer stud­ies at the St. Rt. 95 inter­change at I-71 and for the north­ern half of the county.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Nov 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.