County looks to define administrative coordinator post

Taylor County has had someone with the title of administrative coordinator for a number of years, but didn’t have any sort of formal listing of duties that came along with the title.

Members of the county’s executive committee are working to change that and on Monday gave their approval to a new job description for the position which is currently held by county human resources director Nicole Hager. Hager emphasized that this action was to create a position description, and was not to create a new position.

Most of the 24 “essential duties and responsibilities” are things that Hager has already been doing since she was hired by the county.

Duties added include: Make recommendations as deemed appropriate to the County Board for reorganization of County departments, assignment of responsibilities of agencies as the merger, consolidation or abolition of County agencies, positions and programs and report these recommendations to the County Board.

Recommend resolutions, ordinance or regulations to the County Board to promote improved County services in the public interest and provide all requested information, data and reports requested by the County Board to the extent such information is available.

Follow-up with department heads on direction given by County Board.

When necessary, facilitate interdepartmental collaboration on county projects and activities.

Assist departments with grant opportunities and pursue grants beneficial to the County but outside the scope of a specific department.

In addition, the job description lists the educational knowledge and abilities for the post. This is a routine part of all other county job descriptions, but again, was not ever something that had been formally codified in recent years.

With the additional duties, committee member Scott Mildbrand questioned if Hager was able to do the work herself or if she would need additional assistance.

“I will try to do it all myself,” Hager said. Mildbrand focused on the grant writing aspects of the job description, questioning if it would be beneficial for the county to hire a dedicated grant writer who would seek out and write grants for all county departments. He noted that federal and state funds are increasingly being disbursed in the form of grants and that having someone with the skill to write for them would benefit not only the county government, but town governments also.

He suggested a grant writer position would also free up department staff across county departments by not having them needing to deal with grant applications. He said having a dedicated grant writer could pay for itself.

“I always thought a grant writer would be good for the county,” said committee member Chuck Zenner.

County board chairman Jim Metz agreed, noting the county could actually come out ahead if they were able to get more grant money.

While no action was taken on a potential future grant writer, committee members did approve the administrator job description referring it to the personnel committee for review and approval.

In other business, committee members gave their approval to a series of resolutions altering the supervisors districts’ in the city of Medford to accept for recent annexations that have occurred. According to county clerk Andria Farrand most of the changes do not impact any actual residents living in the areas. Mildbrand abstained from voting on one of the four resolutions because he was involved in the land sale for the property that was annexed.