Lewis County Commissioner Bobby Jackson, center-left, laughs along with fellow commissioner Gary Stamper, left, and Edna Fund, center-right, during a directors update meeting in January.
As the Board of Lewis County Commissioners continues to look at requests for the county’s 2018 budget, commissioners on Wednesday stated hiring a county manager as proposed by a task force earlier this year would be too great a burden in a cash-strapped budget cycle.
A county manager would handle day-to-day operations and serve as a liaison for the commissioners to department heads and other elected officials. The county estimates the cost of such a move to be $250,000 once the salary, benefits and all the needed equipment is established for the position.
The commissioners are currently looking at bridging a $1.2 million gap in estimated revenue and expenditures for the 2018 year while easing away from the use of reserves to balance the budget.
“I’m just going to say that I have real concerns with this whole conversation, and the reason I do is I believe leadership is relational all across the board and not a hierarchy,” Commissioner Bobby Jackson said during a budget meeting on Wednesday. “We have very good relationships with our directors and personally I don’t want to lose that … I see this as another level of bureaucracy the county can’t afford.”
Jackson referred to the position as “having a third wheel for a date.”
“I’m just not sure this is a conversation that is going to lead us anywhere specifically with our budget challenges going on,” he said.
Commissioner Gary Stamper agreed, stating there would have to be some reorganization of directors and staff in order to come up with the necessary funds.
“We would have to take a look at doing something different I think in our departments, whatever that looks like, to save money to be able to pay that person,” he said. “For us just to take out $250,000, I don’t think that would be prudent on our part. We’re still in charge of taxpayer dollars, and that’s a lot of money even without other budget challenges.”
The apparent decision by the commissioners comes after they appointed a task force that, for weeks, interviewed department leaders and other elected officials while analyzing Lewis County government. Those leaders, with few exceptions, said they would support the creation of a manager position to help guide the commissioners and act on their decisions.
The task force, created after informal gatherings by community members earlier this year included talks of pursuing a home rule charter, ultimately recommended the hiring of a county manager beginning in January 2018.
While the commissioners seem to oppose that recommendation, the conversation Wednesday eventually arrived at another option.
Instead of hiring a new person as a county manager, the commissioners discussed reorganizing current staff to place someone in a similar position, a move that would provide a county manager, but would limit the costs, they said.
Commissioner Edna Fund said she’d still like to talk to department heads and elected officials to determine if they believed a county manager would be the right move.
Steve Walton, director of central services, reminded Fund that the task force already talked to those leaders and received positive responses to move forward.
“Keep in mind, too, you are talking about a meeting with directors and electeds. That was done by the blue ribbon task force and everyone gave thumbs up to the concept,” he said.
Walton stated he has been in a chief of staff position twice and found it to have a lot of positives.
“It’s very efficient I found to have that position that I held so you don’t have to bog down the electeds or the one person in charge, much less three people in charge,” he said. “There’s a lot of efficiency that can be gained from having a manager position.”
The commissioners wouldn’t have to relinquish their desire or control to meet with the directors and other elected officials, he said, addressing one of the biggest concerns commissioners discussed.
“In day to day administrative functions, I see it has a great benefit to get that off your shoulders,” he said.
Mitch Townsend, a member of the citizen advisory committee for the budget, said a county manager could free up the commissioners to focus on economic development, a topic he believes should be the focus of every meeting. He’s in favor of utilizing someone already at the county to “satisfy the call for a county manager.”
“It seems obvious you already have talented personnel in place. It sounds like you need an executive officer function in order to manage that more efficiently within the organization that you already have and then you can scaffold up as needed further down the line,” he said
Commissioners favored that approach.
“One of my pet peeves on this little bit is everyone has been implying the reason we need a manager is to manage the budget because we are spending like drunken sailors,” Stamper said. “And that’s where I’ve had an opportunity to say we have a fiscal department and a person we talk to everyday … Going back to the $250,000; it’s just not going to happen. We have to figure out a way to reconfigure and reorganize what that looks like.”
The request to establish a brand new position and hire outside of current county staff will remain on the “wish list” as the budget process continues, Commissioner Fund said.
She also discussed setting up a meeting with the blue ribbon task force to gauge how they feel about a possible restructuring scenario.
Recently, the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce launched an initiative they hope will institutionalize a county manager. “One Lewis County,” organized by the Chamber, began collecting signatures to place a home rule charter before the voters that would seek to reorganize the leadership structure of Lewis County government.
The group has six months to collect about 4,000 signatures of those in favor of the process. If they meet that threshold, voters would elect freeholders who would meet to create a proposal that would later go before voters for consideration.
One Lewis County’s main goal is the creation of a county manager or executive position, though they have also suggested expanding the board of county commissioners from three elected members to five.
The group cites poor financial management, mounting lawsuits against the county and additional upheaval as the reasons for pursuing the change in government. One Lewis County has published additional information on its efforts at www.onelewiscounty.com.
