Committee abandons 'Constitutional County' talk

YATES COUNTY--The Yates County Legislature held its regularly scheduled meeting, Monday, Sept. 12 in the legislative chambers.
Following an ad hoc committee meeting in August to explore the possibility of Yates County designating itself as a "Constitutional County," it was announced on Monday that the idea will not be pursued further at this time.
Ad Hoc Co-Chair Mark Morris spoke at the beginning of the meeting saying, "We are announcing that we are going to disband and cancel - cancel our next meeting on Sept. 26. We have received numerous questions, inputs and advice to investigate and consider. About three-quarters of these have been in opposition to the concept, with many of those being vehemently opposed. We'd prefer not to get into a big community issue on this right now. In the future, if the legislature receives a significant amount of support for the concept, they may consider reopening this...We haven't spent any money on this - just a little bit of meeting time - of those people that are on the legislature. And then the ad hoc committee was set up to kind of look at the situation and say 'should we propose Yates as a Constitutional County.' And where we are right now, is we are not ready to say that."
The legislature then passed all resolutions that were on the agenda with the exception of one.
Resolution 356-22, authorizing the county administrator to create and fill a deputy county administrator position was tabled after discussion. The resolution states, "the county administrator has identified the need to create the deputy county administrator position for efficient and effective succession planning and is requesting that the position be filled...the estimated annual cost to fill the position, including fringe shall not exceed $132,000."
The discussion regarding the position revolved around the extra cost it would add to the budget and about the timeline for the hiring. It was also questioned that if the position was created and then that person was promoted to administrator they would also want a deputy, effectively making the position permanent.
When reached by email after the meeting, County Administrator Nonie Flynn explained, "I proposed the deputy county administrator position as my proactive attempt to orchestrate a succession plan that will yield positive results with greater organization stability and resiliency. This would have been a temporary position with the plan that the deputy would take over as county administrator when I retire."
The measure was tabled "until after discussions during the budget process."