Apparently, some of the county's road workers, including the assistant road managers have not been making the grade when it comes to job performance.
On Monday, the Sunflower County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to require Road Manager T.J. Fairley to conduct work-performance evaluations on all county road department workers.
Concerns about the work performance of the five assistant road managers was preeminent and were brought up to the board by District 1 Supervisor Glenn Donald.
"I think Mr. Fairley is doing an awesome job, he's doing a great job, but we've got to have people that know what they're doing to help him so he don't have to stop, get on the machines and do what we are paying people to do.”
Although he did not specify any particular person, Donald alluded to the assistant road managers not fulfilling their responsibilities and added that this has been an ongoing issue. “When it comes to assistant road managers, we've been kicking this can down the road for too long. If the assistant road managers are not meeting up to their expectation, we need to find us some more assistant road managers and I mean that," Donald said.
Initially, Donald said they should reassign or fire anyone for poor performance and then he suggested initiating a one-month probationary period for anyone who is not doing their job the way they're supposed to and then re-evaluating them at the end of that period.
Donald said he has been steadily getting complaints about the roads not being done right. He stressed that the persons responsible for "cutting" the roads have been doing it long enough to know when the roads are not properly done. He added that the assistant road managers should be checking behind workers to make sure the work is properly done, although they really shouldn't have to.
Keying in on specific tasks, Donald asserted that each one of the roadgrader operators have been doing that work for at least two years. "If you don't know how to do the job in two years, you need to be assigned to another position or go home," he said.
Donald called for the board members to intervene and assist in reducing the pressure on Fairley. "We need to stand up and do something ourselves because we're the ones being held accountable, we're the ones elected," he said.
District 5 Supervisor Gloria Dickerson concurred that the discussion had been ongoing; however, she asked for clarity in who the action should be against. "I need Mr. Fairley to tell us which one of these folks he's talking about and what's his recommendation."
District 3 Supervisor Ben Gaston added, " If somebody's got a problem with work performance, first of all he needs to be written up, so the guy knows he's got a problem and then you show him the corrective action and if he keeps on doing it again you don't move him to another position, you get rid of them and find somebody that can do the job, but all of that comes under T.J.'s (Fairley’s) job description that's why we're paying him the big bucks we are,” Gaston said.
Gaston said it was up to Fairley to make recommendations for disciplinary action and asked if any of the persons in question had received "write ups".
Donald responded, and even though he emphasized that the matter has been brought to them on several occasions prior to this, Gaston and Dickerson asserted that it had never been discussed in an executive session where specific names were mentioned.
Dickerson suggested that Fairley get with County Administrator Gloria McIntosh and write up the necessary documentation. McIntosh said that she and Fairley had discussed the matter and that he is going to be providing documentation.
Addressing Dickerson directly, Donald then asked if she remembered discussing the matter before and she stated that the matter had been discussed, but there was no documentation. "Yes Glenn, I've heard that being discussed. We've discussed that lots of times, the only thing, we have not seen the written documentation that's what we're talking about.”
Dickerson continued, “There's a way that you fire people, you document, you write-up and then you say this person has been given ample time to do his corrective action and now it's time for him to go. We need to start putting that stuff in a document; we've talked about it, but I've never seen anything in writing," she said.
Unrelenting, Donald continued with his assertion that the matter has been brought up on multiple occasions and that documentation exists. “We're talking about people insubordinate, not doing what they're supposed to do," Donald stressed.
Gaston emphasized that if an employee is being insubordinate, then they need to be written up and sent home, the matter submitted to the board for review, so the person can be terminated. Donald maintained that people have been sent home. "I can't believe everybody’s sitting up here like they've got amnesia today, I'm through with it," he said.
Nonetheless, he continued, insistent that the other members of the board were always complaining about the work not being done and that they've been discussing it for the past three years. "Let us stop playing games and keeping people on equipment that they just can't run," Donald said.
Donald then asked the group if their roads were being done the way they're supposed to be done without Fairley having to get on a machine to operate it.
Dickerson acknowledged that they were not and maintained that she was not disagreeing with him on the condition of the roads. "The only thing I'm thinking is, I have not seen a recommendation from the road manager as to who he wants to let go and and why, I would like to know and we move on it based on that," Dickerson said. She called for Fairley to identify who he wanted to let go and present that to the board members for them to act on it.
Fairley mentioned that he had assistant road managers who did not want to do what they were told, but did not say who. Donald said, “We've got to cut it dry, we're playing.”
The dialog of the discussion also covered the need for more training, hiring skilled workers and paying them what they are worth, plus whether there was a need to purchase any more new equipment.
Near the end of the discussion, which lasted nearly 40 minutes, President Riley Rice suggested that they come back with recommendations on what to do about the five road managers at their next meeting.
However, Donald was for moving ahead and making a decision then instead of putting it off until the next meeting. "We're in a meeting, we get paid every month, we are the supervisors. Let's stop trying to rush these meetings,” Donald said.
"I'm not rushing," Rice said, “We're not prepared to talk about it today." Donald said, "I am."
McWilliams then interrupted the exchange between Donald and Rice and said, "Y'all need to slow up now. Y'all are fixing to get into a litigation situation.”
McWilliams explained. “You’re talking about doing something, you don't have a recommendation and you don't have one in writing on something like this from your road manager. And I don't know if you're talking about terminating, but you're certainly talking about putting on probation, and in a month you may terminate assistant road managers that you don't really have any written documentation about yet.”
He continued, “You can say and you may be right saying that they're not doing what they ought to be doing, but you better document it and you better document it well, because not only have they been assistant road managers for years, two of them have actually been road managers. So,you better have some real good documentation before you just do something like that or you’re going to get yourself into some litigation.”
McWilliams acknowledged that the county's workers are all “at-will” employees, but recommended that documentation should be a requirement especially under two conditions. "The first one is, if you don't have documentation then you cannot say that you terminated them for some cause and they will get their unemployment benefits because you didn't have a reason to fire them, you just let them go.”
In addition to that, “The second reason, and this is the more important reason, is that if you terminate someone you cannot do it for an improper purpose and that is race, age, sex and you’ve got some of those assistant road managers who may fall into one or more of those categories. That's the reason to document why you're doing it," he said.
McWilliams told him to direct Fairley to do the work performance evaluations on either the assistants or everybody in the road department.
During the discussion Fairley said he does not think five assistants are needed and that the work was adequately done with three assistants for years. He also mentioned his desire to move some of the road managers to other positions and bring in people that would be more suitable for the assistants’ role.
He stressed that he did not have enough people working for the county to operate all of the machinery that he already has and Donald then turned his focus to getting enough trained people to operate the equipment.
In other business,
The county leaders voted to approve a $5,618.02 payment to Gardner Engineering for the Mallette-Jones bridge project. County Engineer Ron Cassada also mentioned that the necessary quotes for the dirt work on Moll Road were being acquired.
