Todd County Board of Commissioners: Recycling help approved for Solid Waste Department
by Karin L. Nauber
The Solid Waste Department continues to be impacted by the reduction in contracted third-party staff (STEP and Sentenced to Serve, hereafter referred to as local partners) due to COVID-19.
In May of 2020, the commissioners approved Solid Waste to retain the Doherty Staffing Agency (Doherty) as an alternative staff resource to process recycling to make up for staff shortages from local partners.
In the past 12 months, the Solid Waste Department has typically had two Doherty staff working four to five days per week sorting recyclables.
They are paid by Doherty directly at $12/hour.
Recently, both of those individuals found work elsewhere, and the Solid Waste Department needs to find a way to replace these two individuals.
While STEP has increased the number of employees that are available to work at Solid Waste—between six and eight—this is not back to pre-pandemic levels (consistently eight).
According to Supervisor Jeremy Clasemann, “They do not anticipate returning to their previous consistency in the near future.”
Solid Waste’s request to continue with temporary staff from Doherty (two people) was approved. The board also increased the hourly pay from $12 to $15/hour as advised by Doherty who told them that it would be difficult to retain replacement staff without better compensation. . .
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