If there is money to pay for it, there seemed to be no objections from the Marion County Board to hire a county administrator.
Personnel Committee Chair Adam Smith says the need is greater now that the county is looking at major building projects with the county’s 7.2-million dollars in COVID relief money.
Everyone has other jobs. None of us is full-time on this. If you had a full-time person that would be able to just administrate, for lack of a better time, to make sure that everybody is on the same page and have all the stuff we need and all the officeholders can go to that person and be assured they are going to handle whatever they take to them,” said Smith.
Supervisor of Assessments Mark Miller says all the county officeholders feel the position needs to be investigated. He also presented financial information he felt showed with the level of surplus funds in past years would allow the position to be funded.
“You would definitely have enough money to fund this for three years. At the end of that time, the board can make a decision ‘are we going to have the funds going forward, has this benefited us’, if you look at the duties the county administrator would perform, we also believe there is a lot of savings there for the county,” said Miller.
Miller feels a good administrator could also seek out additional grant funding for the county.
Board Vice-Chair Dr. Creighton Engel agreed the position would be nice but questioned if the county could afford it.
“We had $1.3-million in federal prison money. If this ever dries up, one source of funding, this is going to be a moot point. We won’t have any money,” said Engel.
The issue goes to the county board’s personnel committee for further study.
Meanwhile, a new committee was appointed to plan the use of the county’s money being received under the Coronavirus State and Local Recovery Fund. They are County Treasurer Gary Purcell, Engel, Chris Krupp, Adam Smith, David Iossi, Wesley Gozia, and Deb Reed.
