By Scott Pearson

Staff Writer

The Marshall County Commission held a workshop after their regular meeting on Monday, Jan. 23 to discuss the need to add human resources support for the county.

The need for some sort of HR professional in county government has been discussed for several months in various committees.

“Twenty years ago there weren’t that many employees in the county,” said Commissioner Sheldon Davis. “There’s new laws and new insurance that’s coming in.”

“The employees deserve someone to go to,” Commissioner R.L. Williams said. “We need to see to a lot of these (legalities and requirements) that are going on.”

Currently human resource duties are spread among departments. The Accounts and Budget Office handles most of the responsibilities, such as benefits, healthcare reporting, civil service testing, development of a personnel policy for the county, and several others.

A list of duties for the HR office in another county listed two pages of duties and responsibilities.

Malinda White, Marshall County Accounts and Budget director, is also responsible for compliance with various federal programs such as Title VI Equal Opportunity Employment law as well as county compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Bill Reuter, director of Emergency Medical Services, serves as the county safety officer and handles Occupational Safety and Health Administration duties.

“It’s more than Malinda can handle,” Williams said. “Plus, that’s not her area.”

“I think it would be a great help to the county,” White said. “I’m not HR trained. I’m an accountant.”

Compliance, especially with federal employment guidelines, is one of the prime reasons the proposal is in the fore of the commission’s agenda.

“My concern, as an attorney, is the liability that we’ve got created here,” County Attorney Bill Haywood said. “Our left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”

“To not do this, to me, is like having a hospital without a doctor,” Haywood added. “If we have nurses and janitors running the hospital we are going to have lots of lawsuits.”

Commissioner Tony Beyer suggested a group of department heads and commissioners sit down and lay out how the department would work and what responsibilities it would have.

“I think that the penalties that we could incur would far exceed the cost of the office,” said Beyer. “We’d do a better job for the citizens of Marshall County and certainly for the employees of Marshall County, and over and above that, we’d protect the county from the potential of some pretty major penalties.”

Commissioners decided to task the Benefits Committee with beginning the process of developing a framework for the process and to begin answering some of the many remaining questions concerning the issue.

Any proposed action would be aimed at inclusion in the next fiscal year’s budget.

Another idea discussed was a potential increase in the Adequate Facilities Tax.

The tax is a one-time fee on new construction designed to offset some of the cost of the new infrastructure required to support them.

As the county grows, the County Road Department and the Board of Public Utilities, responsible for water supplies in the county, need more funds to construct the necessary infrastructure.

“Growth is good,” said Don Nelson, county building inspector, “but it comes at a price.”

Currently new residential builds are assessed at 70 cents per square foot and new commercial construction at 30 cents.

The Codes Committee raised the idea of increasing the residential rate to one dollar per square foot and commercial cost to 50 cents per square foot and sharing some of that increase with county roads.

Those rates would be in line with those charged by other surrounding counties.

The first $300,000 raised by this tax is designated for the Board of Public Utilities to offset water pipeline construction. The county has not yet reached that number in a single year.

In 2015, the extra 30 cents would have added $98,000 toward county infrastructure budgets, according to Beyer.

The future direction of this proposal is uncertain as the commission seemed to let the proposal die without any plan to move forward.