Personnel committee gives OK to coordinator job description

Taylor County this week inched closer to empowering the administrative coordinator/human resources director. At the June 12 county personnel meeting committee members approved, with Rollie Thums opposed, a new job description for the position. The job description switches the two job titles that are currently held by Nicole Hager. “Who hired her to that position?” Thums asked, questioning approval of the agenda and the steps being taken to approve a new job description and title for the position. Committee member Scott Mildbrand explained that state statute has required the county have either an administrative coordinator, administrator or elected county executive and that Taylor County has paired this job title with the human resources director for many years. What is new is that the county is actually giving the position formal authority to go along with the title. The person in the position will be the primary day-to-day administrative oversight for the county and have authority over the department heads. The county has been working for more than a year on identifying the need for a more formalized management structure noting costly situations that have occurred in the past where the informal structure in place broke down. A special committee was formed and met multiple times earlier this year to go through what type of position the county wanted and after choosing an empowered administrative coordinator, what duties and responsibilities the county wanted the person in that job to have. In questioning the agenda, Thums questioned the process and if the county was approving a job description before approving the job position. According to committee member Mike Bub, the county is following the same process it is has done for other positions that have been brought forward including those for the human service department. The process routinely followed by the county is that after the position’s job description gets approved at the oversight committee level, it is sent to the county’s consultants for payroll classification and it goes to the personnel committee for approval. “It is the exact same procedure we have done,” Bub said, explaining the ad hoc committee set a job description and that it was sent for wage classification and now it is all back at the personnel committee. “This is no different than what we have been doing for seven years,” Bub said. He noted that if approved at the committee the next step will be seeking approval at the full county board. Thums questioned the portion of the agenda for the annual evaluation of Hager. Committee members responded that they are doing her annual evaluation based on her current job description, not on the proposed new job description. During a review of the job description, Thums noted the description was four pages long. “I am wondering how you expect one person to do all of this and stay sane,” Thums said. Committee chairman Chuck Zenner said the expectation is that she will delegate responsibilities particularly in human resources. “If she delegates do we reclassify because they have more responsibilities?” Thums asked. “We might,” Bub replied. Hager noted that she is already doing a lot of the job description. She explained that she had been working to establish policy with finance director Tracey Hartwig. What she doesn’t have right now is formal authority and that she is butting up to those limits now. The changes will allow the county to take the next steps where she can have more authority to enforce the policies. A primary job responsibility is that Hager will take over discipline, even that of department heads, to ensure that county polices are uniformly enforced. Zenner noted that while the position will not eliminate the need for the personnel committee it will greatly reduce the need for regular meetings and greatly streamline filling vacancies in existing positions. The personnel committee would still have a role, among other things, to be a place for staff and department heads to go when they disagree with the decision made by the administrative coordinator/ human resources director. “That is a lot of responsibility for one person,” Thums said. “This is the scaled back version,” Bub said of the draft job description. Thums called for the county to plan for evaluating the position in six months and again a year from now to address any issues that might come up. Board member Lorie Floyd, who has advocated for a more centralized administrative role since she was elected to the board, said she feels empowering the coordinator will increase county efficiency in the long run. One area that drew discussion was in the education and training. The job description that was evaluated for the consultants calls for six to seven years of management experience for the position. Although she has decades of management experience, Hager questioned if six to seven years was too high. Mildbrand agreed with having three to five years of experience. “We want qualifications for how well they can do the job, not how long they have occupied a chair,” Mildbrand said. “There is always a back door to this [B.S.],” Bub replied, noting the county is always able to take any amount of experience and education into account. He cautioned against overcomplicating things and said to leave the experience the way the compensation study placed it at. The study recommended the position be at grade U. Hager’s position with its existing job description is currently at grade S on the scale. This will require a change at the finance and county board to create that level on the county pay scale. The changes will next go to the full county board where they could be amended or get final approval.