While many Bartholomew County government department heads are promising to hold the line on spending next year, there is a significant rise in requests for new employees being made to the county council this week.
Traditionally, hiring new employees has been extremely difficult during the annual budget talks in August for the following year. Concerns frequently expressed by council members are generally focused on salaries and benefits that continue to increase annually.
“They are going to have to make a pretty darn good case for us to increase the head count,” council President Jorge Morales said as talks began Monday. “We’re not trying to increase government. We’re trying to make it more efficient.”
After requesting additional staff every year since 2017, Bartholomew County Health Department Director of Nursing Amanda Organist was well-prepared to make her case before the council Monday. She is asking to hire two new full-time registered nurses. While one would serve as a full-time school liaison and the other as part of the general staff, both nurses would be cross-trained for additional purposes, the nursing director said.
According to national guidelines, Bartholomew County with a population of nearly 84,000 residents should have a staff of 16.8 public health nurses, Organist said.
“We currently have eight, including myself,” the nursing director told the council.
In fact, her division has maintained the same staff level since 1997, when the county’s population was fewer than 70,000, Organist said.
As the population has grown, so have the needs of the health department, Organist said. That includes substantial increases in cases of sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis and hepatitis A, she added.
There appears to be a good chance that Organist’s request will be approved. It was announced in January that the health department would receive a matching grant of $938,011 for the first year from the recently-created Health First Indiana fund.
Part of that money would pay the salary for the full-time school liaison nurse, while the division has sufficient funds left over from earlier grants to pay for the second position through 2028, Organist said.
Her counterpart who heads the health department’s environmental/vital records division also made a case for two new full-time employees.
Link Fulp said he’s seeking to reinstate a position of assistant director who would perform both administrative and inspector duties. That person’s salary of $35.33 an hour will also be paid by Health First Indiana.
It is necessary for the division to establish a line of succession for leadership, Fulp stressed.
“If we do not have someone that I can teach how to do everything I do, and I retire, then we are in a bad position as far as anyone knowing what is going on with cross-training,” Fulp told the council.
His division will be facing additional responsibilities, including a recently-passed county ordinance that calls for the inspection of tattoo and body piercing salons. There is also a new mandate still being developed that calls for sanitary inspections and surveys of all public buildings.
“We think that may be controversial in figuring out how that might look,” said Fulp, who added that while new responsibilities are being added, four staff members are nearing retirement, he said.
Other proposed new employees and their cost include:
- Two new assistant directors for the county parks department ($64,080)
- An assistant county administrator ($60,559)
A week after Superior Court 1 Judge James Worton requested that public defenders received substantial pay raises and county benefits, Morales said he has learned those benefits could only be extended to public defenders if they were made full-time county employees.
The council president said repeatedly there will be no discussions of requests for new employees until late Thursday afternoon, when all budget presentations have concluded.
“At the end, we’ll look at the revenue, what we can afford, what we can’t afford, and do a consensus all at once,” council member Mark Gorbett said.
