Etna Township seeks temporary employee as it prepares to lose 3rd staff member in 6 weeks
Etna Township is seeking temporary administrative help as the township prepares to lose its third employee in less than two months.
At a Feb. 6 meeting, Trustees Gary Burkholder, Mark Evans and Rozland McKee approved contacting a temporary employment service to create a job description and get a list of candidates to serve as a temporary administrative assistant.
The township will lose another staff member Feb. 16 as longtime employee Laura Brown will leave her position as township secretary, a position she has held for nearly two decades. Brown is the third employee to leave Etna since Jan. 1.
"We do want to look long term and permanent, but we have an immediate need now," Burkholder said.
A temporary employee would still need to be approved by the board.
Once Brown departs, Etna will only have one employee working inside the township hall: an assistant zoning inspector.
Besides Brown, zoning inspector John Singleton resigned Jan. 2 after nearly seven years with the township, and administrator Nita Hanson left her position Jan. 24, less than a year after she was hired. She and her attorney allege the township was a hostile and abusive work environment.
Hanson and Singleton both cited Evans' alleged behavior as the reason they are no longer employed with the township.
Trustees also spent part of their Feb. 6 meeting redistributing who oversees various township departments, including the road crew, parks and the cemetery. All of those previously were Hanson's responsibility.
Evans and McKee quibbled over which of them would take over which responsibilities, and it eventually led to Burkholder taking most of them, including overseeing the road crew, cemetery, zoning and township secretary. McKee will oversee the parks, which includes serving as the point person as the township plans for a new park between Smoke Road and Ohio 310 (Hazelton-Etna Road).
But the trustees did not discuss the process to fill the administrator position.
As the trustees discussed reassigning duties, Evans and McKee each tried to bring up past disagreements over township matters, but Burkholder was quick to shut down the disputes, saying they could not litigate the past.
Since Burkholder joined the board at the start of the year, he and Evans have agreed on most issues. But there were times throughout the Feb. 6 meeting that Burkholder and McKee voted together on issues, such as putting McKee over the township parks and rejecting a proposal from Evans to create a township Facebook page.
Evans wanted to create the page as a way to share information with the community. He said he feels information isn't reaching residents and cited low attendance at recent meetings about the township comprehensive plan and a potential ready-mix concrete plant — two issues on which he said the township should want residents' feedback.
He said posts would have commenting turned off, and there would be no editorializing, just sharing facts about upcoming meetings and events.
Under Evans' proposal, Burkholder would have created the posts, as he is the township's point person for public relations. McKee said it's not appropriate that an elected official be the person writing the posts. She also said that with the township being short-staffed, creating a Facebook page should be the least of their worries.
"I don't think we should even get into that. It opens up a lot of cans of worms right now. There's so much stuff that we need to resolve," McKee said.
Burkholder agreed with McKee. And while the township does need to improve communication with residents, he said, it isn't capable of running a social media account effectively right now.
"Facebook has been weaponized against all of us in this community," Burkholder said.
He said in the future he would be supportive of creating a page, but for now residents can check the township's website or sign up for the township's email distribution list, which sends out meeting agendas and other relevant information.
"We are biting off more than we can chew. I'm more than happy to come in here and help out — I know my colleagues are as well — but we've got some more important things right now, and I'm afraid this is going to take even more time away," Burkholder said.
mdevito@gannett.com
740-607-2175
Twitter: @MariaDeVito13
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Etna seeks temporary employee as it prepares to lose 3rd staff member
