One week following the passing of county treasurer Jim-Bob Trant, the county commissioners, at their meeting Wednesday, started taking the necessary steps toward filling that vacancy.
“I will tell you, as we sit here, I have paperwork from two internal employees, and I have gotten paper work from two external people interested in the position,” said County Judge Joe Fauth at the Wednesday meeting of Commissioner’s Court.
Much of the discussion that ensued concerned the application window, and placing an ad for outside hires in the paper. Human Resources Director Talita Coleman said that this was a bit of uncharted waters, so they treated this as hiring any other position would be, which included an advertisement already placed in the Examiner.
But, she says the process will just get longer if they wait for more applications, or run more ads.
“There is an urgency to get it filled, but there is not, if that makes sense. It puts a lot of extra work on your existing staff, not having an actual treasurer in there. I don’t, by any means, want the court to make a rash decision on who they put in there. But, if we post it in the paper, it has to run for two weeks,” explained Coleman. “So, that is another two weeks, plus interviews, then, you are looking at four to six weeks before you can even come to a decision on who you will put in that office.”
She also said, while the applications should be open to those interested, it gets tricky when posting an elected officials position in an open form.
“My fear is, if you put it in the paper, there are a lot of people out of work right now. They might just throw their name in the hat, not really realizing what kind of task they are asking to take on. And, you will have people who interview well, but that does not mean they can do the job,” said Coleman.
After some more discussion, the commissioners decided on accepting applications for the county treasurer position until 5 pm on Monday, January 25th.
Interviews will take place next week, with a decision hoping to be made by the next Commissioner’s Court meeting.