Oneida County board taps Hartman for administrative coordinator

Oneida County has a new administrative coordinator, and it is one of the county’s own elected officials, Tracy Hartman, who is also the county clerk.

The vote by the full county board to ratify the recommendation of the county’s executive committee on Tuesday was 20-0, with one abstention by supervisor Kris Hanus, who also serves as Rhinelander’s mayor.

Hartman already voluntarily performed some of the coordinator’s tasks, and, as the county clerk, will be ready to step into the role at full speed, given her familiarity with the county’s day-to-day operations.

The part-time position is expected to take between 10 and 20 hours per week. 

For her added responsibilities, Hartman will receive a monthly stipend of $2,500 from May through the end of this year. 

The stipend for the position will be revisited during the 2025 budget process.

Hartman’s selection brings to a close a saga stretching back to last year when the county hired a consultant to assess the county’s organizational structure. Coming out of that assessment, county board chairman Scott Holewinski advocated for a full-time coordinator position to manage, or coordinate, the county’s day-to-day affairs.

That vision was never realistically in play, as Holewinski subsequently acknowledged. Supervisor Billy Fried, the chairman of the county’s new executive committee, had his own idea, which was to tweak the existing model — Human Resources director Lisa Charbarneau held the title, which was effectively in-name-only — by actually empowering the position, giving the position the authority to carry out a coordinator’s responsibilities, which was deemed lacking.

That position held sway among supervisors on the county’s new executive committee for a while, but Holewinski offered a plan B — a “hybrid” part-time paid administrative coordinator with defined responsibilities — which carried the day.

The position will be evaluated after six months.

Human Services Department

In other matters, the board voted to create 51 new positions for 2025, 50 of them in the new county Department of Human Services to provide mandated services that the soon-to-be defunct Human Service Center (HSC) has provided.

Oneida County is creating the regular full-time and part-time positions needed to maintain those services to residents of Oneida, Vilas and Forest counties.

So far, no funding has been attached to the positions, and the creation of the positions this week did not include any funding. The county hopes to soon offer employment for the positions to current HSC staff, but first the county must consider an employee benefit conversion proposal, which will include the estimated financial liability to Oneida County to incorporate current HSC benefits, as well as the source of funding for the benefit conversion.

According to social services director Mary Rideout, the new Department of Human Services takes social services programs and community programs — the latter the HSC suite of services — and puts them in a single county department.

“That’s the most common structure of social and human services in the state of Wisconsin,” Rideout told the board this week. “And that’s what we’re moving to. So part of getting there is to bring those employees at the Human Service Center on as county employees in 2025. In order for us to begin making the job offers to the folks at the Human Service Center, I need these positions created because we didn’t have these positions.”

The resolution before the board had no funding attached to it, Rideout reiterated.

“It’s just I need the positions created and then the next step, if you approve the positions, will be to look at benefit conversions,” she said. “The benefit packages that we offer in the two different departments are similar but not the same.”

What’s more, Rideout said, the Human Service Center is still on a 37.5-hour work week. 

“Of course we’re 40 [hours], so that’s a change,” she said. “Our health insurance is different. They would come over to our health insurance. They still have vacation, holiday pay, and sick leave. We have PTO (Paid Time Off). So we need to figure out if they have banks left at the Human Service Center and what that looks like when they become Oneida County employees.  So that’s the conversion that’ll be going to the executive committee this week with the initial draft to get their feedback.”

Rideout said there were still some outstanding things to work out, but, once they are, the county can set about filling the positions.

“Then Labor Relations would be able to begin making offers of employment to staff at the Human Service Center,” she said. “That gives them some assurance that there’s a job after December 31 for them. And certainly we want to maintain as many of those employees as we can because they know their programs, they know the services, they know the clients. So that’s something that is a priority for us and we’re trying to get that done as quickly as we can.”

Of course, Rideout underscored, all employment with Oneida County is contingent upon the budget being approved in November. 

“So that will have to be part of the employment offer just as it is for all of us that are employed, that we have to have a budget to pay for staff,” she said.

Rideout said there could still be some changes in the number of positions and in specific jobs.

“There’s some upper management positions that I think we’re going to have to get some county board feedback on how you want the structure of the Human Services Department to look,” she said. 

The move from a 37.5-hour work week to a 40-hour work week could also impact the number of positions, Rideout said.

“With some of the vacant positions, I want to wait before we create those because we may not need them, and those job duties can be absorbed somewhere else because of those additional hours,” she said. 

Rideout cautioned that the transition to the new department would have ramifications in other departments as well. 

“The other thing to be aware is that this change will impact [the labor relations department],” she said. “We’re building a lot more positions, at least 50. So it’ll impact that department. It may impact ITS [information technology], and finance and buildings and grounds as well. So that’s something that we’re evaluating internally.”