For Jefferson County, the new year brings some changes to the internal governmental structure. Although the changes likely will be imperceptible to the public, officials hope the county will run more smoothly, especially the emergency management division.
Among the plethora of changes, Jefferson County Airport and the Emergency Management division are now part of Public Works and will report to Public Works Director Dan Brindle. The two previously were independent sections.
“This will take a bit of the load off (Patrick Thompson, who formerly oversaw the two sections). Emergency Management and the airport were reporting directly to him,” said Commissioner Michelle Lawrence. “It seemed smart to have them report to Public Works, because that’s where they really fit.”
Lawrence said that the Public Works connection is a matter of coordination when it comes to emergencies.
“When we have to put Emergency Management into play during wildfires or snowstorms, they have to work hand in hand with road and bridge and fleet,” she said. “It all fits together under the umbrella of Public Works.”
Having both entities answer to Brindle was a logical improvement on the existing system, Lawrence said. She stressed that the new chain of command and the accompanying changes were not the result of micromanaging but rather streamlining the administration’s structure.
“The idea is to make things run more efficiently,” she said. “This will coordinate things better. I think we’ve done well to this point, but you learn from situations. This change will make it easier to respond more quickly and get answers more quickly during an emergency.
“We open Emergency Management, and everyone comes together anyway, so they might as well be organized that way in the first place,” she said. “The system wasn’t bad before, but we learned a lot of things this past couple of years. We had the (March 2003) snowstorm, the minor fires last year, the Hayman fire, the High Meadow fire. We’ve learned a lot from wildfires. It’s just too bad we had to learn the hard way.”
Other changes to the county’s internal structure are
• The relatively new community development section headed by Nick Morgan will fall under Human Services and answer to Sherri Almond, Human Services director. “Her (Almond) mission is more aligned with the human services side of the business,” said county spokesman John Masson. “He (Morgan) can have a better synergy with the federal grant programs that come from the federal side.”
• Nanette Neelan will assume the role of assistant county administrator and answer to Thompson. She formerly was special projects coordinator.
• Terry Green will become special projects coordinator. For the past 16 months she was interim Human Resources director. Jim Moore in the new Human Resources director.
• The branches of the county previously referred to as divisions are now departments. Conversely, departments are now divisions. “We looked at other counties and how they did that,” Masson said of the name changes. “We wanted to fit in better with the nomenclature of other counties.”