New county job listing process discussed at officials meeting

At a Hill County officials meeting Wednesday morning, the county attorney talked about a new system for listing open positions in the county government.

Hill County Attorney Lacey Lincoln said now that the Hill County Human Resources Legal Assistant Brittany Pfeifer will be doing human resources work full time, they are proposing a new, streamlined method for drafting job descriptions and postings.

Lincoln said Pfeifer now has the time to become more intimately familiar with the county’s pay scales and other aspects of its various positions, and with that knowledge and time, she can be the primary person to do most of that work.

Lincoln said under the proposed change, any department head with an opening can contact Pfeifer and she can create a job description and posting which she will send back to the department head to make sure everything is accurate before sending it off to the commission.

Lincoln said the current process for drafting job descriptions and postings wastes a lot of time and hopefully the policy will remedy that.

“We’re just trying to make things easier on department heads,” she said.

She said they would make sure all the departments have a chance to look at the policy and provide feedback before they move forward so there is no confusion.

Mosquito District Supervisor and Weed District Coordinator Terry Turner said he thinks the policy looks good to him.

Hill County Sheriff Jamie Ross said as long as he knows what changes are being made in advance of the policy being implemented, he’s fine with it.

Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean said the commission has been working on getting American Rescue Plan Act-funded projects going and they’ve received bids for improvements to the RSID 29 and 30 lift stations as well as the RSID 21 lift station.

McLean said both projects’ bids have been much higher than expected.

Hill County Building Manager Joe Smith also provided an update on another ARPA-funded project, the courthouse’s new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.

Smith said there have been some minor delays, but at this point they are still on track to have the project out to bid in November.

He said he’s hoping these delays won’t affect that schedule at all, but if they do, he doesn’t see it delaying the project going out to bid by more than two weeks, which he doesn’t think will hurt them too badly.

Smith said his department is working on switching a couple HVAC panels at the Hill County Detention Center from pneumatic to digital and are working on updates to their air handler.

He said they’re still waiting on some parts and it’s looking like they’ll be ready to move forward in September.

Lincoln said her office hired a victim and witness coordinator which they are extremely happy about.

However, she said, they are still short a secretary and two deputy county attorneys.

She said she hasn’t run the numbers yet, but it seems like the office’s number of cases is up significantly.

Ross said crime in the area is up, but because they are still so short staffed they’ve needed to pull some deputies off the street to cover the detention center.

He said this year’s Great Northern Fair went well and there weren’t many incidents.

Turner said recent weather has slowed down some of his department’s activities this past month, but they have made a huge amount of progress eliminating a massive weed patch in the Sage Creek Area.

In a meeting in March, he said the patch used to be 4,500 acres, but in recent years they reduced it to 1,000.

Wednesday he said his department had taken care of 590 acres last week.

He also said the county is going to see an incredible amount of grasshoppers this year, and it’ll likely only be a couple weeks before they roll into Havre.

“There’s millions, billions of them out there … all the way to the Sweetgrass Hills.”

Hill County Superintendent of Schools Vicki Proctor said she’s working on establishing a digital presence for the area’s rural schools, which will make it easier to apply for grants for them.

Proctor also said budgets are getting pretty tight this year because of the rising cost of school supplies.