BENTONVILLE — Benton County wants to revamp its Planning Department by separating tasks into three separate divisions and organizing staff to better handle those jobs.
John Sudduth, county general services administrator who oversees the Planning Department, presented his proposed reorganization to the county’s Job Evaluation Salary and Policy Committee on Monday. That panel, made up of the county’s elected officials or their representatives, endorsed the idea and voted to send it on to the Quorum Court’s Personnel Committee.
Sudduth wants to separate the department’s planning duties from its responsibilities for doing building inspection work and enforcing the county’s environmental regulations.
“What we’re wanting to do is what most communities, cities and counties have already done,” Sudduth said. “We need to separate those into three divisions — planning, building safety and environmental services. The way it’s set up now, we can’t function. We have had a planning director who was a professional in planning. He had no background in building inspection or in environmental enforcement.”
The department also had failed to keep up with the growth in the area. Sudduth pointed out Benton and Washington counties are growing by about 700 people a month. The county has hired planning professionals and then asked them do clerical work, answer phones and handle questions at the front desk.
“The way we’re doing it is just outdated,” Sudduth said. “It needs to be upgraded.”
Sudduth is proposing to separate the planning, building and environmental enforcement duties into three separate divisions each with its own director. The staff also will be reorganized to reflect the actual positions and their duties. The county’s building staff is now headed by a chief building inspector, which doesn’t reflect current standards and practices or conform to state law as adopted by reference in the county’s ordinances, Sudduth said. Adopting the commonly accepted organizational structure will also allow the county to more readily compare its jobs and pay scale to other similar entities.
AT A GLANCE
County Budget Process
The Benton County Quorum Court’s Finance Committee will begin meeting as the Budget Committee in October. Sarah Daniels, county comptroller, said the first meeting has not been set, but it will probably be scheduled for the week of Oct. 14.
Source: Staff Report
“That way we can compare apples to apples,” Sudduth said.
The committee also endorsed a number of other proposed new positions and regrading of existing positions, including a trained medical assistant in the Benton County Jail, a coroner assistant/deputy coroner, a female veterans’ outreach service officer and a director of road/bridge construction and maintenance for the Road Department. The proposals will all be sent to the county’s Personnel Committee. Shirley Sandlin, justice of the peace for District 8 and chairman of the Personnel Committee, said she was trying to schedule a meeting of that group, but nothing had been set.
Barb Ludwig, county human resources director, said she will work on the new positions and regraded positions approved by the committee to determine their possible impact on the county’s budget. Ludwig said she will present that information to the elected officials in advance of the Personnel Committee meeting so they can decide if they want to pursue any or all of the proposals during the county’s 2014 budget cycle that will begin next month.