Commissioner-elect George Skamai has had one of the County’s corner offices as Chief Clerk since July 2007. The new Board of Commissioners will appoint a new Chief Clerk during their reorganization meeting Monday morning.
by Jonathan Weaver
While they won’t be sworn in Monday, there will be a new official in the County Commissioners’ office by next week.
County Commissioners-elect George Skamai, Jason Renshaw and Pat Fabian are close to choosing a successor for the role of Chief Clerk – a position Skamai has held since July 2007.
During the recent “recruiting effort,” Skamai, of Rural Valley, said the elected-commissioners look to hire from within the office staff and possibly distribute responsibilities.
“We’re planning to replace this position in a manner in which does not require additional payroll,” Skamai said. “We’ll all on-board with that. We see the opportunity to do that because of the personnel we have in-place here right now, and we’re just taking advantage of the resources that we have.”
He said conversations have indeed taken place with a select group of individuals so that a clerk can be appointed at the January 4 reorganizational meeting.
Skamai hoped the new clerk embraces degrees of humility, organization and interpersonal skills, but said it might take the first year before the new clerk becomes well-adjusted to the office and diverse group of agencies (and abbreviations).
“You have to have the mindset of being a servant first – if you do that, the functions of the position can be learned and there are enough good people in support here that you’re not on an island whenever you have to make decisions about things that pop up you haven’t seen before. You can ask – I did a lot of that in my first year,” Skamai said.
Skamai was first interviewed by former-Human Resources Director Mary Anne Koleny before a panel interview by former County Commissioners Patricia Kirkpatrick, James Scahill and outgoing Commissioner Richard Fink.
His first shock came about four hours after the panel interview - when he was hired.
A bigger shock came after wife, Amy, suggested multiple times during his tenure that God might consider him worthy of filling one of his boss’ elected seats.
Toward the end of Kirkpatrick’s and Scahill’s respective terms, Skamai began taking notes for the current Board of Commissioners.
“I used to write myself notes - not as a commissioner, but maybe when the next Board comes in, I (was going to) make a recommendation to do it this way. I always looked for efficiencies in operations,” Skamai said. “Although it wasn’t the big picture things I had to suggest, I do have notes I wanted to share with the next Board.”
An example of one of those ideas included standardizing the public meeting schedule for 2015 - with most occurring throughout the week at 9AM.
The new Board of Commissioners will possibly also discuss additionally bumping the Prison Board monthly meetings to 9AM rather than the current 8:30AM start.
A former law firm’s facilities manager, Skamai also did not use former Clerks Sara Droddy or Judy Rupp as resources.