Improving to better serve you

As usual, there are many positive things going on in Lawrence County. Our unemployment rate, at 3.1%, is the lowest since 1973. We’re making real progress toward the reality of a local four-year college. The proposed county budget for 2017-18 has no tax increase, no cuts in services, and will make us financially stronger.

The secret to success is having good people on your team and letting them do what they do best. Each thing I’ve mentioned came about because there are volunteers and professionals who are doing good work behind the scenes.

One of the biggest teams I serve with is County Government. We could not function, much less succeed, if it weren’t for the 275 people who come to work every day and do their jobs. Today I want to talk about two in particular.

Budget Director Teresa Purcell and Road Department Office Manager Patsy Lee recently earned the Certified Public Administrator designation through CTAS, the County Technical Advisory Service that’s part of the University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service.

CTAS was formed by the General Assembly in 1973 to ..."provide studies and research in county government, publications, educational conferences and attendance thereto, and to furnish technical, consultative and field services to counties of the state in problems relating to fiscal administration, accounting, tax assessment and collection, law enforcement, and public works, and in any and all matters relating to county government.”

We depend on CTAS for all those reasons, and the training they offer is top-notch. The certification Teresa and Patsy earned isn’t something you get by attending a day-long workshop. The requirements, listed online, sound a lot like college: “four of the 10 core classes; 40 credits of electives; a passing score of 70 percent or higher earned on the county government overview; a passing score of 70 percent or higher earned on the exit exam; and attendance at the three-day Capstone event.” It also calls for 16 hours of continuing education a year to keep the designation.

Some courses are designed for specific county departments, and others explain the work of county government as a whole. That means Patsy and Teresa are not only learning how to do their jobs better, they’re learning more about how their work relates to other county operations.

Road Superintendent Donnie Joe Brown says he and his department’s other 38 employees depend on Patsy to handle bookkeeping and a thousand other tasks to keep things running smoothly. We all know how important our roads are, and thanks to the work Patsy does, we all benefit.

Teresa has one of the highest-pressure jobs in county government. She and the seven other employees of the Budget Office deal with the day-to-day financial operations of every department, and meet ever-changing requirements from state and federal agencies. Our most recent audit had zero findings, but Teresa took on the work of this CTAS certification to maintain that record. On behalf of every taxpayer, I thank her.

Because of the people I work with, I am able to give positive reports to you on a weekly basis. They provide the subjects; I’m just the messenger.