County committee gives OK to more staff at health department

In a move designed to let the public health nurses work with public health, members of the county’s personnel committee on February 17 approved creating a public health program specialist position for the health department.

Public health director Michelle Cahoon said the position would be entirely granted funded.

“These grants are continuous grants,” Cahoon said, noting that as long as the funding exists for them the county will receive them. “It will never be a tax levy expense,” Cahoon said.

Cahoon said that with the county no longer having a veteran staff and while they are learning having someone there to do the grant work and seek out additional grant funding for the county.

“I don’t think our county should be adding employees,” said board member Scott Mildbrand asking Cahoon if she really believed there would never be a tax levy impact if the position was created.

“From what I can see the grants have always been there and will always be there,” Cahoon said, citing funding sources from radon grants, and emergency preparedness programs. “There are new programs that we didn’t know exist,” she said.

“As we get out of this COVID stuff, we need nurses back to doing public health,” said board member Tim Hansen noting the position will take away some of the stuff the nurses are doing and allow them to focus on providing care. “All the programs that have been shoved in back corner because of COVID,” he said.

Board member Mike Bub raised concern in general about grant funded positions and the need for them to be reviewed if the grant funds go away. “Never is a long time,” he said of the assurance the position wouldn’t cost local taxpayers.

Board member Lester Lewis said there were already safeguards in the hiring with the county board able to add or subtract positions as needed. “We can do that at any time,” he said.

In the end, committee members approved the position.

In other business, committee members:

_ Tabled action on updating the administrative support job description for the zoning department until after the forestry committee had had a chance to review it. Zenner noted the position, which had been shared between zoning and forestry, was shifted to forestry a year ago with forestry getting some assigned hours. He said it was supposed to have been reviewed at six months, but that was never done. Lewis and Thums voted against tabling the description.

_ Approved recommending changes to the ordinances stating the number of staff in each department and the breakdown of which employees work 40 hour versus 35 hour work weeks. The changes include listing the information in a chart format rather than a paragraph format to make it easier to read. As far as departmental authorizations it brings the number of positions allowed in the departments into line with how many are currently employed in those departments. In total the revision cuts 16.95 full time equivalent positions from the amount allowed.

_ Approved changes to the casual and seasonal employee wage schedule to pass along the percentage wage increase approved as part of the county’s pay matrix revision earlier this month. The pay changes are retroactive to January 2. Seasonal positions at the winter sports area will see larger increases with the wage paid to first responders to go from $13.48 to $16, for the crew leader to go from $10.68 to $14 and laborers to go from 8.53 to $10. The changes go to the finance committee for final approval.