Philosopher Camus wrote “Always go too far, because that’s where you will find the truth.”
County Commission Meeting
October 26, 2016
Public comment
BLM – Good news the Baker water tank is ready to go. The BLM is looking statewide to solve the wild horse problem, so if there are any ideas please let us know.
Road Commission
Bill Miller – We budgeted $60,024. for McGill roads, the actual cost came in at $29,536.92, so we shot Duck Creek.
Special Fire Commission
The sale of a truck , $22,500, proceeds to go the purpose of vehicle repair and maintenance.
Fire District volunteer residence and eligibility requirements,approval of membership and eligibility records. Coster “I was concerned about volunteer records, eligibility for membership, participation and cost associated with volunteers. We talked about standardizing the application of candidates, volunteer records should be kept uniform because they are employees of the county.” The human resources department in the county should have updated records as to volunteers, some that have moved, etc.
Fire Chief Woolever “ We have to clean up our policies a little bit, and keep better records. Once a volunteer has attended policy meetings and instruction, they are put on the membership rolls. It may take as much as one full year for a volunteer to be fully trained to the extent that we purchase turnouts for them at the price of $3000.
(Once the county and all their fire departments have a uniform understanding of policy and training, it will make it possible for the city fire department to train with the county. The training together will benefit everyone, as the volunteer fire departments learn to respect and trust each other.)
Ordinance 466, raising the total hotel tax (0.5%) from 11% to 11.5%, providing additional revenue for the golf course.
Mike Wheable “From January 1 to June 30 the revenue will go to the golf course. From July 1 on, the revenue will go into a combined fund for recreational use. The golf course may request funds from this fund.”
Tourism and Recreation board will be in charge of collecting and distribution.
A question came up about the rail road getting a percentage of the room tax since the railroad is now considered a private annuity, should they automatically get a percentage of the tax? Mike Wheable will be looking into this and report back to the commissioners
Job description for the position of Community Coordinator as a new exempt position in the Community and Economic Development Department.
Will the new job exclude the correspondence for the County Commissioners? Gary Perea stated he preferred to leave the correspondence where it is. She will be supporting the County Commissioners. Reviews and prepares comments on propose legislation on natural resources. She will be going to meetings in Carson City. We will be having a civil attorney that will be handling natural resources.
Laurie Carson’s state of the qualifications for this job the completion of required college courses in Business management and other courses pertaining to the job and two years experience. Preferred but not required.
Richard Howe “To create a new department with one person over themselves, I do have a problem with that. This is going to be a department head, and looking over all these duties, are clerical duties. Should be under the court supervision and I just don’t see an individual department head over themselves, I just don’t like it. This is absolutely against what we’ve been trying to do, we have been trying to shorten the government. Keeping her as an hourly individual would be better than making her a department head.
Coster “We have been talking about reducing staff and make sure it wasn’t only in our lower grade of employees. This would give us an opportunity to combine departments not add new department heads. We are talking about creating a new position, recruiting and doing internal recruiter but we keep talking about her, her,her, I can tell you if someone wants to sue with an unsuccessful application for this job we are giving them a lot of evidence here today. I don’t know if we can promote someone for a new position. This is a pretty drastic rewriting of a job description for economic development. We should be treating this as an entirely separate position, we can’t select a person for it. As Richard said I would like to have this located in the clerks office. Since there has not been a head of the economic department, there have been a host of concerns about the hours of the office and the function of the office.”
The salary of the new position would be $50,294 plus benefits. Coster and Howe also commented on this salary in comparison to other salaries of department heads who have up to 12 employees under them.
This passed by at 3 to 2 vote. Coster and Howe voted no.
(This is one where you don’t have to read between the lines, and yes they do have a person in mind for this position. The name partially slipped out in one statement. They do have to put it out for any county employees to apply for it. And if nobody applies it then goes out to the community. Now I do not know if they have to let the person who is now handling the old position and then allow her to apply for the job.
This new position is not needed and should not have been voted to go forward. Most of the EDC work is being done for White Pine County in Elko by a group the Commission joined. One reason was given for keeping the EDC office open, it was in case someone needs some information about developing a business in White Pine County. It has been my experience, new company’s will contact the city or the Chamber of Commerce . )
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Two members of the White Pine County planning commission resigned as a result of the elimination of the Administrative Assistant of the Community and Economic Development office. This board is now below the NRS mandated membership and cannot legally meet and conduct business. Now the duties of the Planning Commission will fall directly on the White Pine County Commissioners.
(The Administrative Assistant to the Community and Economic Development is the person that takes minutes for different boards and is paid by the County.)
Assignment of administrative support duties for WPC Advisory Board.
Mike Wheable “There may be some conflict if we hire a county employee to do these two duties because of overtime. Do we want to hire someone outside the county employees?”
Gary Perea feels the hire should be out side the county to do these duties. We need to come up with the amount of pay. Some boards want to get their own person.
Elizabeth stated that the Building and Planning Department used to do the duties of the Planning Commission. Do we need all the boards we have? The IRS frowns on getting two W-2 forms for the same person. This could cause an audit.
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Contract for Public Health Nurse
A conference call was made to the state concerning the employing of a Health Nurse for White Pine County. The position has been advertised, there was one applicant. This applicant did not qualify for the job. Most of this conversation was very confusing, not only to myself, but to the commissioners. Evidently money assigned to White Pine County for a health nurse was sent to another county. White Pine County is assessed $9900 by the state for this position.
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Johnathan Dishong will be joining the Ruth Town Council.
Geri Wop
