By Charlene Sims, infor@linncountyjournal.com
MOUND CITY – When Kent Harris was hired to be planning and zoning director earlier this year, he was interviewed by the Linn County Commission instead of Shaun West, the public works administrator under who Harris will be working.
During a commission meeting on Feb. 18, commissioners discussed how to get him up to speed.
“I feel like there are a lot of discussions,” said Commissioner Alison Hamilton. “We could easily sit down with him for an hour. We’re supposed to be leading him and I feel like we aren’t giving him all the tools or direction and I don’t want to do that publicly.
“I feel like we need to do that in a work session with him, see how his office is ran, set up, programming. Go over all of that stuff. Legal even.”
“I feel like that part of that is his job to figure out,” Johnson said. “I believe if we can get him acquainted with other planning and zoning coordinators in other counties…”
“I’m fine with that. I agree, yes he’s going to have to dive in,” said Hamilton.
“So, we’re in charge. We’re the ones who pass the regulations, the zoning regs and things of that nature. He’s the one who’s got to . . .” said Hightower.
“Yeah, I get that part of it,” Hamilton said. “I think just a couple of things pop off in my head immediately would be the program that we use, we didn’t even know the name of it. But I think it should be in his job description of what program he would be utilizing. Also, the only certification that he was required to have on the job description, he didn’t know about it and we didn’t go over that.
“That is something he and I talked about Tuesday. He did not know it was in the job description, and I think as commissioners we should have sat down and talked about that he had to have that license.”
Hightower said that he agreed with Hamilton that the commissioners should have been telling him that.
“I don’t think that we looked at it as he had to have that license to get hired. We were going to help him pursue that license, right?” asked Hightower.
Johnson said that they needed to be really clear on their job descriptions.
“Along those same lines,” Hightower said, “I don’t feel like we should have necessarily been doing those interviews.”
Hamilton answered probably not because he’s not under the commission.
“Right, and I think we need to be following our guidelines from that standpoint and maybe those things wouldn’t have been missed if we were in our lane,” said Hightower.
“I actually agree with you on that, if that’s not what we are supposed to be doing then we shouldn’t be doing that,” said Hamilton. “With GIS coming up that should not be us. And probably not even the assistant in the office.”
Hightower agreed, “Right, that is not us.”
“We need to be making bigger decisions than that,” said Hightower.
Hamilton agreed, “I guess coming in I didn’t think about that.”
Hamilton said she did not know if the county even had a flow chart, Hightower said the county did.
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