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Letter To The Editor: County Services Schedule
Author: Jeff Schritz

County Services Schedule

This letter is in regard to the MT43 article published on June 12th.

In the summary of the June 8th meeting, the author cited a number of complaints voiced by County residents over solid waste and road maintenance. The County’s response was that their hands are tied because of limitations in manpower and the structure laid out in the CBA between the county and the union.

Although the CBA was only briefly referenced as one limitation, the significance of the union agreement should not be overlooked. Our county leadership must take note of this situation and exercise its authority to modify the CBA to ensure employee privileges are not placed ahead of the Taxpayers’ needs.

Reworking the agreement to incorporate an 8-on-6-off schedule would greatly increase the productivity of our solid waste and maintenance departments. The manpower would be divided into two rotations, each working a Thursday-to-Thursday schedule. This would allow our county managers to assign and schedule work continuously 7 days a week while still adhering to the 4-10 work week, which has been dictated by the CBA.

Changing the operating hours of our Courthouse (and those state/county departments operating within) to M-F 6 am to 6 pm, with one shift running from 6 am to 3 pm (1hr lunch 10-11 am) and the other from 9 am to 6 pm (1hr lunch 1-2 pm), would also eliminate the inconvenience of the county offices closing for one hour during lunch. The early open, late close, and a full staff during the noon hour would provide an enormous benefit to those faced with the prospect of losing wages in order to meet the county on “their” schedule.

These small changes would be a great benefit to the County Residents. It is the county's obligation to its constituents to research and draft processes for implementing these changes, as well as rebalancing roles, tasks, and personnel to operate within the current budget.

City of Townsend, take notes…

Cheerfully optimistic,

Jeff Schritz

Townsend