Search for county engineer continues

The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors is continuing their search for a replacement county engineer.

Supervisor Mike Olson said one of the candidates had accepted a position at another location, while the second candidate had been unable to schedule an interview due to conflicts. The interviews which had been tentatively scheduled for May 29 were postponed.

Supervisors Donna Robinson said she felt they needed to focus on advertising for the position again, and seek outside assistance.

“I think that we need to consider using a search firm and get some information and get some help on this. I know it won’t be cheap, but I think we need to consider that alternative and get some help to attract candidates,” Robinson said.

Supervisor Bryant Amos was in agreement with Robinson, and said that in some cases, people looking for jobs put their information with a research firm that searched for open positions for them.

Robinson said she didn’t feel the county was in trouble when it came to finding a candidate, she simply felt they needed to switch gears and look in another direction for help.

The consensus of the board was for a search firm to be hired to aid in the search for a replacement candidate for the open county engineer’s position. Amos said the firm would be able to provide a highly qualified candidate.

“He’s going to be able to weed out some of the applicants before we even have to, as their reputation relies on getting good applicants for us,” commented Amos.

Due to the delay in finding a replacement, Robinson said they may have to look at extending the shared engineer agreement with Cass County, or look to another county for assistance.

“I don’t see that we’ll be in a position to fill the vacancy in a month, but we’ll do our best,” Robinson said.

Amos said he was hopeful that after a smooth month of sharing that the Cass County Supervisors would be open to extending the sharing agreement.

The Supervisors also scheduled a bid letting for the rock haul on June 4 at 8:45 a.m. The plan is to rock 125 miles of gravel with roughly 37,000 tons of gravel.