Nicole Altman recently was appointed to the Beatty Water and Sanitation District Board of Trustees, filling a vacant position seat that resulted from the passing of Barry Jacoby.
The board is currently dealing with the challenge of finding and hiring a replacement for General Manager Rob Shirley, who is to retire on Oct. 1.
Shirley has offered to stay on as a consultant for up to six months to help train the new GM without salary, asking only that the board pay for his and his wife’s health insurance while he is acting in that capacity.
Shirley, who took over as GM at a time when the district was undergoing a difficult time, made the offer to help train the new GM because he wants to preserve the work he has done. “I didn’t do this for five years to throw it under the bus,” he said.
Board Treasurer Jeannie Ybarra said she was not as concerned about having to train a new GM on the operations end of the utility, saying that any qualified person they might hire should be able to handle that. She was more concerned about training the new person in the administrative end of the operation, which includes learning specific software and procedures to produce and file all the required reports and forms for various agencies.
A new office worker was also recently hired and will also need training in the software and procedures used in administration, and Shirley can also help with that.
The district is legally required to have a certified operator on hand at all times, and Shirley will be out of state for a couple of weeks in October to be with a daughter who is scheduled to undergo major surgery. During that time, the board plans to contract with someone else to be available to cover that requirement.
They have received a couple of applications for the GM position, but have not yet conducted interviews. They want to make sure that the person they hire is thoroughly qualified and either has the required Nevada certification or can obtain it.
The board decided to change the job description of the main worker in the office from “clerk” to “administrative assistant.” They also decided to hire a part-time clerk who could help out during the busy times of the month and also fill in when the administrative assistant would be on vacation. They will be advertising for that new position.
Richard Stephens is a freelance reporter living in Beatty