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Highlands Today

County Commission Questions Manager Plan

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

County administrator Carl Cool talks about the organizational structure changes during a goal-setting workshop on Monday in Lorida.

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: February 5, 2008

SEBRING — Highlands County commissioners are not pleased with plans to hire three new top administrators at an extra cost of about $300,000 per year.

At their meeting today, the five commissioners, three of whom must run for re-election this year, will consider hiring the first division director in the county's history.

On Monday, at the county's annual "visioning session," Commissioners Don Bates, Guy Maxcy and Barbara Stewart said they were less than happy with the prospect of what Bates called "adding another layer of administration" to county government.

The price tag to do that — adding three employees with the title of "division director" — will be between $190,000 at the low end, to $360,000 per year at the top end of the salary schedules.

The county commission had created the new positions last year to increase efficiency. Three new people will be hired, while the fourth position has already gone to Rick Helms, who went from "assistant county administrator" to the new position of "assistant county administrator/director of the division of administrative services."

Bates said that while the county will bear the cost of the added salaries, it was not clear how the positions would make county government more efficient.

Stewart expressed a similar concern.

"I'm not convinced that just adding four more people is going to accomplish this goal," Stewart said.

Stewart said she supports changing county government's structure to provide "higher value services."

But, she said, no other county in Florida has division directors below the county administrator. Officials in other counties have said hiring division directors to run the day-to-day government operations may lead to lower quality services because the county administrator will be "isolated" from both citizens and county workers, she added.

"That scares me," Maxcy said, referring to spending about $300,000 on additional administrators without an immediate, direct benefit to taxpayers through better services.

Tommy Todd, the general manager and chief operating officer of Glades Electric, is the facilitator for the commissioners' 2008 "visioning sessions," as he was for the 2007 visioning meetings.

The commissioners, like Todd, use the word "visioning" to describe Todd's process of setting goals and "action steps" to accomplish those goals.

Todd defended the new positions. This step might not lead to better services immediately, he said, but it will when other reforms are taken at the lower levels of county government.

He described the hiring of the managers as "bombing Iraq from the air." Then, he said, to win the battle to improve services while saving tax dollars, the next step is "sending the troops in on the ground."

Todd also disputed Stewart's remarks about how other counties view Highlands County's new management flow chart with four division directors added as a buffer between the administrator and department heads.

With the division directors taking care of "day-to-day" management, he said, the administrator can then become: "a visionary, (and) the public face of the county." The administrator would then be freed up to plan and "focus on the big picture" while the division directors run the day-to-day operations, Todd said.

If that happens, Todd said, the administrator would also have sufficient time to keep the five county commissioners "informed and educated so that they can make informed decisions."

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