Megan Miller
Cumberland Times-News
Oakland — OAKLAND — Garrett County’s hiring freeze means the county roads department will be down 16 roads workers through at least spring 2011.
The department lost 16 employees through retirements, and those employees cannot be replaced because of the freeze. On top of that, two other employees will be absent because of military leave, bringing the total to 18.
“The optimum thing would be to hire employees, but understanding that we have the hiring freeze … we’re going to work something out here to do the best we can,” department Superintendent Jay Moyer told the county commission Tuesday.
Moyer outlined a plan to shuffle workers from the Oakland garage to the Grantsville garage to try to cover staffing gaps at Grantsville, which had the highest number of retirements with eight.
Two operators and one foreman will move from the Oakland garage to Grantsville. The Oakland garage will also take over road service for Pine Hill Road to the top of Spring Lick Road, an area normally serviced by the Grantsville garage.
Commissioner Fred Holliday, whose district is the Grantsville area, expressed concerns that fewer roads workers means roads will go unplowed for long periods during the winter.
“With losing a minimum of four drivers — four plows — that’s four routes that aren’t going to get done,” Holliday said.
But Moyer said that won’t be the case.
“You’re saying a route won’t get done. It will,” he said. “But this is going to take some public cooperation and understanding that it won’t be exactly like it was in the past in a major snow event.”
“The best we can do is hope for a mild winter this year,” Moyer added.
Moyer said summer maintenance work, such as mowing and cleaning ditches and shoulders, might actually be harder to accomplish with fewer employees.
“The public needs to understand that we will continue to operate as we have in the past, but with a shortage of manpower it may be difficult to do the same schedule that we did in the past,” he said. “But we will work at getting things done as quickly as we can.”
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