County starts process to fill forestry position

Taylor County will begin the process to replace former forest administrator Jake Walcisak.

At the January 12 Forestry and Recreation committee meeting, committee members approved starting the hiring process for the position. Walcisak who had worked for Taylor County forestry department for the past 10 years, left to take a forestry specialists job with the Department of Natural Resources working in forestry certification. He noted he is moving from a landscape of working with 18,000 acres of forest to having 6.5 million acres of forest. The position is based out of Prentice where Walcisak lives.

Generally, when a position becomes open in a department, the county posts for the job prior to the oversight committee meeting to get the process moving. It typically takes about two months to fill a job vacancy at the county, depending on the position.

In this case, however, the county decided to hold off on posting for the position until the forestry committee could meet because there was a question of if the county would fill the position. Committee chair Scott Mildbrand alluded to this during Friday’s meeting when he changed the order of the agenda items to put consideration of filling the position ahead of reviewing the job description.

“I want to make sure it is approved before we change the job description,” Mildbrand said.

It was noted that whenever there is a vacancy, the county looks at staffing levels and if it makes sense to fill the position. Walcisak noted that the county has looked at the staffing in the forestry department four times in the past 14 months for the possibility of reducing staff there.

He noted the first time was in October 2022, then in April 2023 during the budget review meetings, the third time was last summer when there was a vacancy in the department and now with Walcisak’s resignation which was turned in in December 2023. January 12 was Walcisak’s last day working for the county.

Walcisak said that he feels they have justified the need for having two full time staff in the forestry department. He noted the volume of work that exists not just for marking timber sales and working with loggers in the county forest, but with the recreation aspects of the office including working with sportsman groups, snowmobile clubs, and development of trails for snowmobile and ATV use.

“It is a job that makes Taylor County better for its residents,” said county board member Mike Bub, a former member of the forestry committee who attended the meeting to show support for keeping the department staffed.

“Don’t think this is just forestry,” Bub said, noting the amount of work the department does to improve the lives of people of Taylor County and having the recreational resources available for people who want to travel and visit here.

He said he was concerned with what would happen to the recreational end of the department’s responsibilities if they did not fill Walcisak’s position.

“If we dropped everything that wasn’t timber, we would still underperform in the timber area,” Walcisak said, noting the department’s work plan would take 1.3 full-time equivalents to just handle the timber sales and that the remaining .7 FTE includes all the other work the department does.

In recent years, the county has received between $500,000 and $700,000 in wildlife and recreation grants which were made possible by the work done by the forestry and recreation department.

Committee member Jim Gebauer proposed filling the position, but delaying hiring someone for a couple months. It was noted by human resources director Nicole Hager that under the normal hiring they would be looking at March before they could hire someone. Department head positions are interviewed by the full committee.

There was some confusion as to the intent of delaying, if they should put off starting the search to fill the position for a couple months or if they should start the process now with the intention of having someone hired within two to three months. It was clarified the intent was to start the process now.

One of the reasons for the delay in filling the position would be to see how the department ran with just one person there.

“I think it is important to have two people in our forest to monitor what is going on out there,” said committee member Gary Beadles. One of the duties of the forestry department personnel is to check on active logging sales to make sure they are within compliance with their contracts. Beadles said only having one would be like only having one game warden or police officer.

Committee members voted to start the process to fill the forest administrator position. While there was a cursory review of the job description, committee members postponed formally approving it until the next meeting to give them time to review it.

It is routine practice at the county for job descriptions to get updated when there are staff changes as a way to make sure the job description aligns with the work that is actually being done by the staff members in that position.

Walcisak also noted that it is customary that when there is an administrator vacancy in a department that the person who is taking on the additional responsibilities as the temporary department head, get a pay boost.

Walcisak suggested that the county should temporarily move the assistant forest administrator up to $34.27 per hour while he is filling in for the administrator.

Mildbrand said that while he 100% agreed with the idea of paying the other staff member more, he felt it needed to be on the agenda for action. “We can’t make the decisions today because it is not right for me to do so,” he said, but noted that they could address this by taking action next month and backpaying to the start of the pay period that began on January 14.

In other action, committee members:

 Approved the forest recreation plan. This is a routine inventory of the county’s recreational offerings that is required to be reviewed every few years and needs to be in place to qualify for state grant programs. There were minor changes.

 Received an update that the shoreline vegetation management work on the Camp 8 Dam was completed and the discharge flow was reduced to allow the impoundment to refill over the winter. A new dock has arrived and is being stored until spring when it will be installed.