Health Insurance, Employee Evaluations on Franklin BOC Agenda Tonight

The Franklin County Board of Commissioners plans tonight to take up the matter of whether the commissioners should be provided with county health insurance when they meet for their regular monthly meeting.

At their work session last week, Commissioner David Strickland said he believed it should be offered to everyone, even part-time salaried employees, such as the commissioners, because the impending Obamacare will require it.

However, commissioner Clint Harper disagreed saying it was nothing more than an expensive perk.

“We’re cutting everybody else’s budget, we’re not fully funding the animal shelter, so we can potentially get a perk of $25,000 a year to give to this board for insurance,” Harper said again. “Nobody (commissioners) spends 30 hours a week here, OK? Don’t even tell the public that.”

“Didn’t say you had to. That’s not what we said,”  Strickland retorted.

“Well, you’ve said many a time that you spend over 30 hours,” Harper replied.

“No I have not said that,” Strickland said.

“Yes, you did,” Harper replied.

“I don’t know where you got that, Clint. You’re living in a lollyland, ” Strickland said.

“I don’t think so,” Harper said.

In other business tonight, the board is expected to vote on an ADA transition plan and a procedure to develop an ADA grievance policy.

They are also expected to continue their discussions on updating the employee handbook and vote on whether to make employee evaluations mandatory for each department.

At their work session last week, commission chair Thomas Bridges noted the county does not do employee evaluations and there are no job descriptions on file for any position the county has.

Bridges said he would like to change that beginning with the county manager.

“I understand it’s been quite sometime since Mr. Morse has been evaluated, but it is the responsibility of our county commissioners to evaluate the county manager,” Bridges said. “And it’s our county manager’s job to determine who evaluates who and the department heads to evaluate those in their department at least annually.”

Tonight’s meeting begins at 6p at the Justice Center in Carnesville.