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Planning board discuss personnel policies
Officials want city, county workers to be equal
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The Liberty Consolidated Planning Commission governing board on Tuesday discussed amending its personnel policies regarding a pension administrator and rates of accrued leave for employees.
The governing board includes the mayors from each municipality and the chairman of the Liberty County Board of Commissioners. Flemington Mayor Sandra Martin typically is chairwoman of the board, but Hinesville Mayor Jim Thomas presided over the meeting in her place because Martin is recuperating from surgery.
The board had asked Liberty County Administrator Joey Brown and Hinesville City Manager Billy Edwards to compare the LCPC’s employee-leave policy with that of the city and the county. Edwards and Brown advised the governing board to update its policy and make the rates of accrual equal for all LCPC employees.
Edwards said the LCPC currently has three levels of employees and each level has a different accrual rate. This caste system was created when the LCPC brought on city and county employees as the organization was being formed, he explained. These employees also were once allowed to “bring over” the leave they already had accrued, according to Edwards.
Brown said county employees all accrue leave at the same rate, which keeps the process equitable.
Thomas said the board would take Edwards’ and Brown’s recommendations into consideration and vote on the personnel policy when it next meets Oct. 2.
LCPC Executive Director Jeff Ricketson also asked the board to approve a resolution to designate an administrator for the LCPC’s retirement program. Former LCPC Executive Director Sonny Timmerman, who retired this past summer, had served as pension administrator, Ricketson said.
Ricketson told board members he was advised by the Georgia Municipal Association to have the city of Hinesville’s human-resources director designated as the LCPC’s pension administrator. Hinesville is the fiscal agent for the LCPC, according to Edwards.
Ricketson also told the governing board he has been reorganizing LCPC staff since he came on board in July. He asked board members to consider amending the organization’s job-classification plan as structured by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government last year.
Ricketson said he would like to rename several planning positions to better reflect job duties and a worker’s education and experience. A planner I would be entry level, a planner II would be someone with a bachelor’s degree and at least three years experience, and a planner III would have a master’s degree and six or more years of experience, he said.
The executive director said he recently hired a new planner at a lesser pay scale to replace the transportation director’s position, which was left vacant when Rachel Hatcher resigned over the summer.


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