Council on Aging director resigns

The Hill County Commission announced the departure of Hill County Council on Aging Director Don Kenny at their weekly business meeting Thursday morning, where they also tabled a number of contracts and policies that require more time to consider.

Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean said Kenny’s last day will be July 8 and they received his resignation letter before the meeting.

The commission also tabled consideration of a potential contract between the Hill County Council on Aging and A Plus Health Care, one McLean said Hill County Attorney Lacey Lincoln has concerns about.

They also tabled consideration of a county credit card policy as Lincoln indicated to them that she needs more time to consider and synthesize the recommendations given to her by other county officials on the matter.

Department heads for several years had asked that their departments be issued cards they could use on expenses instead of paying out-of-pocket and asking for reimbursement, especially for out-of-town travel. The commissioners agreed in April to get one card for the county under the management of Hill County Auditor Kathy Olson, with the intention to eventually approve more.

Since then the commission has been discussing setting up policies for the credit card, but when they attempted to pass one earlier this month Lincoln objected, saying she wanted to see the policy before they voted on it and that other department heads should be given the opportunity to go over it as well.

The commission also voted to table consideration of a potential change to how the county pays for property-casualty insurance.

McLean said in previous meetings that the commission sat down with Olson to create a new system after Montana Association of Counties made changes to how it handles this insurance.

She said she believes the proposal, which breaks out the cost of that insurance between Hill County’s general fund and the various departments based on how much those departments make use of the insurance and how likely it is that they would need to make use of it, is fair.

Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstrong and Hill County Treasurer Sandy Brown objected to the commission considering they were not consulted about the change at all.

A similar scene played out at the next meeting when the change was brought up again, with McLean saying she received no request to review the proposed change from department heads, with Armstrong and Brown saying no information on the change was ever sent to department heads, despite Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson saying he would get the information to them.

After some discussion the commission voted 2-1 to table the matter, with Peterson and commissioner Jake Strissel voting for tabling it and McLean voting against.

This week the commission voted unanimously to table the matter.