County Administrator Deborah Allen recently announced that the county hired a new human resources director, Heather Cade.
This addition is part of Allen’s efforts to fill open positions at the government center and stem the departure of personnel that’s been increasing in intensity since the second half of 2023.
Cade comes from the neighboring Grand Traverse County Road Commission, where she worked as human resources manager and director of administration for over five years. Allen says that Cade’s “quasi county government” background will help her lead the county’s HR department. She said that Cade provided HR support for approximately 60 employees at the nearby road commission, compared to about 120 employees at the county government center.
“I’ve worked with Heather. She knows a lot about these processes, and she has sat down with the clerk in terms of getting some information on how things have been done previously. She’s a fast learner, and she’s already working on things. I’m very pleased with her progress,” Allen said.
Cade has experience with Municipal Employees Retirement System (MERS) of Michigan — which may prove useful as the county Board of Commissioners ran into some controversy regarding the purchase of MERS service credits last summer — and handling union negotiations.
Cade is the second person to step into the HR director role since the previous Leelanau County Board of Commissioners made the controversial decision to strip finance and HR duties from the county clerk’s office and assign them to new departments in mid-2021. Darcy Weaver served as the department’s first director from April 2022 through January this year.
Before they hired Weaver, there was some widespread dessent among county commissioners whether the HR director should be a full- or part-time position. Weaver was hired to work full time at 35 hours per week with an annual salary of $62,736, and Cade will also work 35 hours per week.
The county has also already found a new administrative executive assistant in Jill Rowley, who started on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Rowley’s previous job was executive assistant and registrar at the charter school Greenspire in Traverse City, and she started working there in 2015.
Rowley’s predecessor, Laurel Evans, announced that she was leaving on Oct. 27, following a heated public meeting where the county board agreed by a 4-2 vote to move the executive assistant to a salaried position and increase the wages for that position from $53,000 to $62,523 annually, effective Jan. 1, 2024. Evans’ last day with the county was on Jan. 3.
The dissenting votes were from commissioners Gwenne Allgaier and Melinda Lautner, with Allgaier claiming that it was unnecessary for a full-time salaried county employee to assist the administrator during board meetings, and Lautner saying that the assistant has failed to provide requested documents to her in a timely manner.
There was some discussion between the county personnel committee and County Prosecutor Joe Hubbell regarding merging the executive assistant position with a new FOIA coordinator role for the court, but these plans fell through because the executive assistant is a nonunion, salaried position while a FOIA coordinator would be a union/Teamsters position. The prosecutor’s office ended up hiring a part-time FOIA coordinator, Katie Smielewski, who started on Jan. 16.
Despite these gains, however, the county still has big shoes to fill with the departure of planning and community development director Trudy Galla late last year. Galla announced that she was retiring after 35 years of service to the county in November, and in the process, she left seats on many boards and commissions vacant.
The search for a replacement for Galla seems to have hit a snag, however. Allen alerted the county commissioners at the Jan. 9 executive session that she was recently made aware of a May 2011 resolution approved by the board that “the management of the planner will be under the general supervision and control of the Leelanau County board of commissioners. Only the county board may fire the county planner.”
“So, because of this and because of some of the discussions that we’ve had, I would – just for my own protection – like to have some direction from the board… I cannot assist the planning department by adding staff until I know what the opportunity is for actually hiring a planning director, or frankly, this board’s direction on if they want me to extend a search out further from what we have currently done,” Allen said.
This item was ultimately tabled until the next executive session on Feb. 13. Commissioner Lautner stated her belief that too many responsibilities were assigned to Galla, and that some of the planning department’s parks and recreation duties should be reassigned to the executive assistant. However, she received some push-back from commissioners Douglas Rexroat and Ty Wessell.
“For me, the question is: does the board manage the daily tasks of the county, or do we hire an administrator, and have the administrator work with her team, department heads, and elected officials? I don’t know that we approve all of those. I think that’s why I want a governance workshop. I think some of this stuff, you delegate to the administrator. You don’t like what the administrator is doing, you do that during the evaluation process. But you don’t micromanage every decision,” Wessell said.
Until the board reaches a consensus on the next planning director’s duties and whether they should report to the board or administrator, former Senior Planner Gail Myer will continue serving as interim planning director.
The county does not appear to have gotten any closer to finding a replacement for their last finance director, but Allen said that interim finance director Catherine Hartesvelt extended a job offer for an account clerk, and is looking to review applicants and move forward with interview process for another account clerk.
