Oneida County moves closer to job offers for HSC staff

Oneida County officials have been promising for a while now that most employees of the soon-to-be-defunct tri-county Human Service Center (HSC) would be offered jobs in the county’s newly formed Department of Human Services, and sure enough the county took a big step last week in making those offers a reality, presenting a plan to the county’s executive committee to create 51 new positions for 2025.

The committee approved unanimously a resolution to create the full- and part-time positions needed to maintain services to the HSC’s three-county area (Oneida, Forest, and Vilas), in addition to the county’s existing social services staff. The new Department of Human Services will consolidate the HSC’s community programs with county social services. 

Current Oneida County social services director Mary Rideout — who is widely expected to be the new director of the new human services department — said it was important to begin offering positions of employment for 2025 to existing HSC personnel.

“So as you’re all aware, we are in the midst of implementation planning for our Department of Human Services, and that includes incorporating the positions at the Human Service Center into Oneida County,” Rideout said. “What I’m really looking at is creating the positions so that we can begin making employment offers to the folks at the Human Service Center so that they know come January 1st, 2025, that they have employment with the county.”

Obviously, Rideout said, the proposal would be included in the 2025 budget and contingent upon the county’s approval of the budget, as is the normal process.

In her presentation to the board, Rideout said the first step in that process was to get the positions created within the county’s pay scale. While there are 57 position titles at the HSC, Rideout said she was requesting 51 of those to be created within Oneida County. 

Of the 51 positions, Rideout said 50 would be within the new human services department and one would be within the buildings and grounds department. 

“So that’s basically a maintenance tech that would go to buildings and grounds,” she said. “We had a work group that reviewed the positions. We looked at the educational requirements, the length of service requirements for job knowledge, any certifications or licensing that are required for some of the positions that are unique that Oneida County doesn’t have equivalents for.”

Rideout said the group also looked at other counties and where they placed those positions on their wage scale.

“We did some internet searches, those kinds of things that determine the placement, and so I think we’re all pretty comfortable with the placement on the wage scale,” she said.

None of it was etched in stone, Rideout said.

“Some of these positions we may come in and request changes as we develop the human services department because some of the job duties that folks are doing now, they may not be doing within a human services department,” she said.

For example, Rideout said, HSC does its own payroll but those functions would all transfer to the county’s finance department.

“There’s some human resources functions that are being done at the Human Service Center and those will be done within our labor relations office,” she said. “IT [information technology], different things like that.”

Rideout cautioned that the plan was just a start and requests could change. She also observed that some positions in the HSC were duplicative.

“Of course there’s a director of social services and a director of the Human Service Center,” she said. “There’ a finance manager at social services and a finance manager at the Human Service Center. We don’t need two for a human services department for the county.”

Right now, in talking with the county’s human resources director and corporation counsel, Rideout said they all believed the first task should be to create the position of director of the human services department. 

“This committee decides how to fill that position,” she said. “And then once that’s done, then we look at these duplicate positions and further define the organizational chart for the human services department.”

While Oneida County is creating the positions, Rideout assured executive committee members that Vilas and Forest counties — the other two counties in the old tri-county scheme — would share costs to offset the proportional costs to the county. Rideout said the next step was to create a benefit conversion proposal. 

While new employees would receive county benefits, the county also needs to figure out the conversion of such things as vacation and sick leave balances and how they transfer to the county. 

Rideout said a conversion proposal would include an estimated financial liability to the county.

“And then that will have a fiscal impact statement because we’ll be talking about currently that the Human Service Center has vacations, sick leave, personal days, those kinds of things for people that have banked them,” she said. “If we bring them over to Oneida County, in whatever form we bring them over, Paid Time Off (PTO) or whatever, we’re going to have to have a fiscal impact for you.”

For example, Rideout said, if Oneida County converts an employee’s vacation time to PTO when they transfer to the county, and then that person quits in February, the county ends up paying out PTO that was earned while the employee worked at the Human Service Center.

Rideout stressed that that responsibility belongs not just to Oneida County, but would be the responsibility for all three counties.

“So that’s the next step we’re looking at,” she said. “And then we would bring that plan back to this committee for your review and approval. And then after that we would be able to start making employment offers.”

Rideout said a big purpose of moving rapidly ahead with the creation of positions and a benefit conversion plan was to assure some of the people that are currently with the HSC that they have employment on January 1.

“We certainly want to prevent people from leaving for other employment and I think at least knowing that Oneida County is moving in that direction and we’re able to make those job offers will help with that,” she said. 

Executive committee chair Billy Fried asked if Rideout believed the new department’s budget would stay within what the HSC numbers would have been for 2025.

Rideout said that was the goal.

“So that’s the budget I am hoping to present to the committee that is within what would have been the tax levy to the Human Service Center,” she said. 

County board chairman Scott Holewinski, who is also a member of the executive committee, said he believed there should be actual cost savings, given that Rideout is proposing the creation of 51 positions compared to the HSC’s current number of 57 approved positions.