Commissioners consider new county offices position

SUPERIOR – The creation of two new positions within the county was the chief topic of discussion during last week’s meeting of the Mineral County Commissioners.

Charlee Thompson approached the commissioners with a proposal for two new positions, a Safety Specialist and a Human Resources Director. The positions would help fulfill necessary gaps in the county’s offices as well as taking some pressure off existing officials.

According to a job description provided by Thompson and County Clerk Staci Hayes, as a Safety Specialist Thompson would administer and maintain the county’s safety program; she would also investigate safety accidents as well as ensuring the staff’s compliance to the rules and procedures.

“It’s just to help get some policies and procedures in place,” said Thompson of the position’s core purpose.

As Human Resources Director, she would be responsible for establishing policies and procedures as well as directing personnel activities of the county. Some of these activities would include strategic planning, payroll, benefits, training, performance management and other tasks.

Thompson felt the positions were good for everyone in the county offices. She said the positions would give county employees someone to talk things over with to work certain issues out. The result would be a “better atmosphere” for people to work in. The safety specialist could also potentially save the county money in insurance claims.

Hayes noted both positions also meant someone would always be able to go to training events to be brought up to speed on the latest policies as well as trends of safety and human resources practices. Currently, the HR and safety duties are spread among Hayes’ office as well as other current employees; due to their schedules, they are not always able to attend such briefings and events.

“If we don’t start having representation at some of these, we’re going to start losing out on some of those credits we can get back,” said Hayes.

County Attorney Marcia Boris also felt the new positions would alleviate some of the pressure on her, among other employees. She noted the HR position would cover some of the non-legal questions she regularly gets asked about; she said it was to an extent where at times she would spend days working on a non-legal matter, unable to focus on legal issues.

“I think it would be very helpful, from my perspective, to have somebody who could be an intermediary between the department, the department head and the level that we get to when they need a legal opinion about things,” said Boris. “I think that if we had someone to do the preliminary things … it would free a lot of us up to do the things that we were really hired or elected to do.”

The commissioners unanimously approved a motion to appoint Thompson to both positions on a temporary part-time basis. They will monitor how the positions work out, doing regular checkups and seeing how effective they are, until the next budget cycle. If it is determined the positions work, they will open them up to a competitive hiring process.