Baxter County to fill vacant payroll position

The Baxter County Quorum Court met in regular session Monday and in a recap of the February Personnel Committee meeting, District four J.P. and newly elected Chairman of the Personnel Committee, Bill Lucas, says the current employee handling payroll has resigned and the County is looking to fill the position by the end of the week.
Erric Totty has this report.

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In February’s Personnel Committee meeting County Clerk Canda Reese said she had been waiting on a decision how the County will handle payroll functions currently under her office. In the meeting Reese proposed the issue be dealt with immediately due to her concerns for the employee handling payroll, who has since resigned, and what would happen if those duties were taken away.
In December’s meeting of the Quorum Court, two different proposals emerged for handling the placement of the payroll position. Baxter County Judge Mickey Pendergrass proposed payroll functions be outsourced at an estimated cost of slightly more than $35,000. County Clerk Canda Reese presented a counter proposal to the Court’s Budget Committee on November 21st, 2016 that the current in-house payroll, located in her office, be kept as it is.
Lucas says since the payroll position is vacant that determination is still up in the air. The County is hoping to fill the position by the end of this week. Due to the vacancy, newly appointed H.R. Director Ryan Robb says work on a new personnel manual has to be delayed until the position is filled. The next meeting of the Personnel Committee has also been pushed until the second or third week in April.
In other Quorum Court business, ordinances were unanimously approved, with District 11’s Ty Chapman absent, appropriating just over $3,100 in fees and reimbursements received in January to the Baxter County Sheriff’s Department. Excess fees were appropriated from 911 revenues to the Office of Emergency Management, in the amount of $23,600, to purchase a new vehicle and funds were re-appropriated for a state mandated budget clean-up for the 2016 budget.
Three resolutions also unanimously passed authorizing Baxter County Judge Mickey Pendergrass to apply for a grant on behalf of the Baxter County Fair Association, confirming the appointment of William Waldrop to the Baxter County Planning Board and confirming the re-appointment of Don Blair to the Planning Board.
The court also heard the annual report, for 2016, from Kim Crow-Sheaner of the Donald W. Reynolds Library. She says library usage and volunteer hours are up from 2015 and previous state funding cuts were restored enabling the library to reopen on Sundays in 2016. She highlighted the many programs of the library in which public participation was up, from 2015 into 2016’s report, by 26 percent.