The Sherburne County Board Tuesday approved a reorganization of the county administrator’s department that will include the creation of a new assistant county administrator position.

 

Administrator Steve Taylor introduced the plan at a workshop last week. He said the realignment will serve a number of purposes. The new assistant administrator will primarily manage back-office operations and will reduce Taylor’s span of control from 11 to eight persons. It also provides a back-up role for the county administrator.

 

Currently, 11 different departments report directly to Taylor: Assessor, Health & Human Services; Planning & Zoning, Probation, Public Works, Veteran Services, Human Resources (HR); Central Services, Information Technology (IT), Facilities and Economic Development.

 

Taylor said it’s difficult to achieve all his goals with his current schedule.

 

“I’m meeting weekly with my staff, doing performance evaluations, developing goals, seeing how people are doing with their goals, attending staff meetings, committee meetings and having manager meetings,” he said. “This will allow me to spend more time with staff.”

 

Under the realignment, the assistant administrator would supervise five different departments and report to the administrator. IT Director Brian Kamman, and Office Supervisor Donna Primus would also report directly to Taylor.

 

The assistant administrator would also assist the administrator with long-range planning and the budget, HR issues and special projects.

 

The central services coordinator position, headed by Lynn George, will change to Risk & Grant Coordinator. The responsibilities of that position will include countywide policy development, grants, workers’ compensation and insurance claims, centralized purchasing, building committee coordination and supervising the MN Extension Services.

 

Taylor said as part of the process, he intends to have office assistant Mary Jo Robish scan and index requests for board action documents, ordinances and resolutions.

 

“I’m looking to have this available to the public as well as staff, because right now, when someone asks Donna (Primus) for a board action from 2008, she needs to go through a file cabinet to find it.”

 

Taylor said the realignment would not cost much, even with the addition of the assistant administrator position because a new HR Director will be hired at a lower rate than Roxanne Chmielewski, who is retiring in 2015.

 

He said the county will also save money if the assistant administrator was already a county employee.

 

“I’ve had a couple people express interest in the position if we were to hire internally,” he said. “If the board were to support this position, assuming it’s an internal fill, there will be a negligible cost impact. The cost would be $5,000 to $7,000. And I can probably get it closer to zero.

 

“Ideally, I’d like to fill the position as soon as possible so this person will help hire the HR director.”

 

The board voted to approve the realignment.

 

The board also voted to allow members of the corrections unit in the sheriff’s dept. to take a divided vote on whether to continue having Social Security deductions taken from their pay.

 

At a workshop last week, attorney Scott Lepak said there was a “glitch” in the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) system back in 1999 when the state went from a coordinated plan to the state correctional plan. At that time, the state assumed that Social Security would follow along with the correctional plan. But the state later found out that wasn’t the case.

 

This year, the state came out with a technical correction that requires all affected persons to vote whether to continue coverage under Social Security or discontinue the deductions.

 

The vote could either be a majority vote - where the majority decides one outcome for everyone, or a divided vote, where each individual gets what they voted for.

 

After hearing testimony from a number of corrections personnel at the workshop, the board decided each person had the right to make an informed decision about their own retirement options.

 

They ruled there should be a divided vote.

 

The vote will affect 114 people in Sherburne County Corrections.