Bisbee appoints former JP Glass as liaison
Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2009
BENTONVILLE - During Tuesday night's Committee of 13 meeting, Benton County Judge Dave Bisbee announced his appointment of former Justice of the Peace Chris Glass to be Bisbee's liaison in learning the ins and outs of all county offices currently housed in the Bogle Building.
Beginning Tuesday, Glass will be charged with supervising the Planning Department, the Environmental Services Department and building maintenance in an attempt to restructure those departments to make them more efficient, Bisbee said.
"During my first week and three days in office, almost all of my difficulties were coming out of the Bogle Building," Bisbee said, noting that the main problem is a breakdown in communication between the offices housed there and the offices located in the Benton County Administration Building.
"One of your former colleagues, Chris Glass, has agreed to go in there and supervise the entire building and to contact the appropriate state agencies, to study the laws and to come back to me with suggestions on how to make things more efficient over there," Bisbee said.
Although Glass will only be acting in a supervisory capacity for a few months in the Bogle Building, he will remain with the county as a full-time employee even after his job there is complete.
"All of this is intended to make us more efficient, more user friendly and to save us money," Bisbee said.
The reorganization is meant to make county offices more efficient and to perhaps save money, although the process is not meant to be a witch hunt, Bisbee said, noting that his main goal is to get employees in positions that best suit their abilities.
"I am going to dive in and evaluate the departments first and foremost at that building to determine where inefficiencies exist and to improve communications," Glass said.
One problem Glass noticed last year with the Planning and Environmental Departments was that despite warnings of a troubled economy and the need to be a little more cautious with spending, the departments filled two staff positions after they were vacated.
"Much to my chagrin, we would have liked to determine if it was necessary to fill those two positions in those departments," Glass said.
"In the throws of an economic turndown and with the construction industry in the tank, we have two departments who deal almost solely with construction, and they were short-staffed and it was a blessing, and they go and become fully staffed again," Bisbee said.
Glass said he expects the process of restructuring the Planning Department, building maintenance and the Environmental Services Department to take about three months, on the conservative side.
The main goal of restructuring the county is to make sure that all members of the county government are on the same page, Bisbee said.
The county currently has around 600 employees: 300 of those are members of the Sheriff's Office, 100 are in administrative offices (assessor, collector, etc.) and the remaining 200 fall under the supervision of the county judge.
Bisbee and Glass will examine all departments to make sure the county is running as smoothly as possible, and Bisbee stressed that he is not on a witch hunt and has no plans for a mass purging of employees from the county payroll.
"I really want to stress there is no witch hunt. There is not a big rift coming," Bisbee said.
"The idea here is to be very transparent with the policy makers (the justices of the peace) so that the judge can have the Quorum Court's support in the direction he wants to take the county in," Glass said.
During the Committee of 13 meeting, Bisbee also announced that he received letters of resignation from Planning Board members Tim Sorey and Mark Gray on Tuesday afternoon.
On Monday, the director of environmental services for the county, Jim Ecker, tendered his resignation.
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