County moving forward with handbook update

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

With funding officially in place for the project, Putnam County is ready to move forward with rewriting the employee handbook.

County Commissioner Rick Woodall first publicly mentioned the idea during a February commissioners meeting, but further bids were sought.

With the County Council approval last week of $13,000 from the Economic Development Income Tax Warchest, the project is ready to move forward.

The county will be going with the originally proposed vendor, Waggoner, Irwin, Scheele & Associates, whose proposal back in February was for between $10,650 and $12,320.

Auditor Lorie Hallett assured the council that a newer handbook would provide some clarity for questions that often arise.

“There have been so many personnel questions in the last few years,” Hallett said. “Every day there’s something. I spent three hours recently on a comp time question.”

The last handbook rewrite was in 2011, with the county borrowing much of the text from another, larger county’s handbook. County Attorney Jim Ensley said due to this fact, certain portions of the handbook really don’t apply to Putnam County’s situation.

With the new handbook tailored to Putnam County’s needs, officials hope to find it more useful.

Commissioner David Berry told council members that he has been looking into a possible drug testing policy, but is waiting to move forward until the policy can be written into the new handbook.

In other business:

• The council approved $5,000 to fix a radio tower on County Road 700 South.

Dispatch Director Dave Costin told the council that the repair has already been made and paid for, most of it by insurance.

However, the $5,000 will reimburse his department’s budget for covering the deductible.

The tower, which is used to dispatch to Cloverdale, was struck by lightning.

• A $20,000 additional appropriation was approved for Cloverdale Township Trustee Dale Monnett.

The money is already in the township budget, but had to be appropriated for capital outlays by the County Council.

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