The county has not had an asset and purchasing director since November 2016, when Randy Quisenberry left for a job at the Council on Aging for Southwest Ohio. The two candidates are Chris Hacker and Mike Barhorst.
Barhorst is vice president for finance and administration at Shawnee State University. Hacker is the assistant finance director for the city of Centerville and worked previously for the city Hamilton as its purchasing coordinator.
One part of the new director’s job will be to finish a facilities plan Quisenberry started, which involves trying to maximize the assets and facilities. The county commissioned a space study in 2012 to evaluate all of the county-owned leased office space. The upshot was that 25 percent to 40 percent of the space is unused or underutilized.
That project has fallen off the radar, but the commissioners are planning to resurrect it. That can happen, in part, because the county eliminated its general fund debt last year. It had been making $10 million annual payments for that debt, which is money that can now be redirected elsewhere.
“We are refocusing now, if we can get past this pandemic we’re going to look at our space needs and see how we can rearrange our assets to the most optimum use,” Commissioner T.C. Rogers said. “That’s what we’ll be doing here in the next few months.”
In years past, several office holders and departments have renegotiated or ended leases and outsourced some services to save tax dollars, to the tune of around $278,837. County Coroner Dr. Lisa Mannix’ newly renegotiated morgue lease is the latest effort, which will save $40,000 to $50,000 over the five-year agreement.
Boyko said the project to optimize their space is an important one.
“It’s an identified need to ensure that we are using building facilities and assets productively to be the most cost effective for the taxpayers,” Boyko said. “If that means utilizing existing property that we own and consolidating lease space into it, that’s the most productive for the taxpayer then of course we want to do that.”
Commissioner Don Dixon estimates 10% to 15% of the space could be eliminated. Discussions happened some years ago about relocating the auditor, recorder and treasurer under one roof because people often need all three of their services at once. Treasurer Nancy Nix is housed in the Government Services Center while the other two offices are in the annex building a few blocks down on High Street. The development department is also housed in the annex.
There are separate buildings for Children Services, the Juvenile Justice System, Probate and Area Courts, county engineer, Board of Elections and the sheriff has three facilities, to name a few of the county-owned buildings.
The county needs many of these separate facilities and there is not room in the GSC for everything. Then there is also the COVID-19 factor to consider, officials have learned many county staffers work just fine remotely.
“There’ll probably be a little rearrangement in all the offices,” Dixon said. “But it is a pretty massive job to try and coordinate all those people and get them where they belong, where they fit and work better and it’s easier for the public. It’s not a simple deal which we found out when we started the process. We’ve got a good outline, we just have to finish it up.”
Watching government spending
The Journal-News has reporters in our communities watching how our local governments are spending tax dollars. That led to reports in the past week about the county coroner saving taxpayers with a new this lease and the county’s overall efforts to cut empty space today.
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