County layoffs confirmed

They included:

•Stacey Crowe Brock, an administrative secretary in License & Permits who had worked for the county since 2004.

•Diane Meriweather, an office assistant in Roads & Fleet who had been in her job since 2006.

• Amy Whitlock, a GIS technician in Geographic Information Services who had worked for the county since 2004.

•Carol Johnson, a real property appraiser, who had worked in the Tax Assessors Office since 2005.

•And Nathan Holt, a real property appraiser, whom the BOC had agreed to hire just three months ago.

The cuts of all seven vacated positions will save the county’s FY2011 budget more than $312,000 in salaries and benefits.

But Commissioner Steve Worley, who originally recommended the cuts in order to balance the budget, voted against Tuesday night’s resolution.

Making the comment, “less work, more people,” Worley explained later that he opposed the final layoff roster because he believes the county doesn’t need two planners and two building inspectors at a time when building and development are at a near standstill.


POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES

Worley also complained after last week’s announcement of the pending layoffs that politics and personalities were factors in the selection of which positions to cut.

Indeed, every employee on the layoff roster had either complained about her former supervisor in recent months or had worked for a manager who had publicly stood up to some members of the BOC.

Brock was the clerk who in May told a Barrow Journal reporter that her director, Lyn Clement, said he would never again talk to the newspaper and for none of newspaper’s staff to call or step foot in his office.

But Clement later said he had not told Brock to say anything other than “no comment.”

Neither Clement nor Brock was disciplined directly in connection with the incident.

However, Brock later complained that Clement had lost his temper with her over it, and Clement retired suddenly in late July.

His personnel file, reviewed by the newspaper last week, indicates that it had been purged of some documents.

But it did include a settlement agreement that states that even though his last day of work was July 30, his retirement is not effective until Dec. 30.

In the five-month interim, he is being paid for accrued leave time as well as holidays, and the county is paying the cost of his singlecoverage health insurance until his normal retirement age of 65.

For more on this story, see the September 29 edition of the Barrow Journal or click here to read the full story online when you subscribe to our new e-edition.