Roger Baker, Gilpin County Manager.  The wet weather has certainly kept our woods wonderfully green and lush here in Gilpin County—no fire bans for a while in our forests!—but those same soaking rains have played havoc with the County roads.

Even though the County-maintained roads are in much better shape overall than they were a dozen or so years ago—better construction techniques and regular maintenance have contributed to that—short-lived potholes and bogs are appearing more places more quickly than our road crews can keep up with.

Part of the reason for this is the ongoing staffing shortage our Public Works Department has been dealing with for many, many months.

Our entry-level road maintenance position (and these employees do many other things throughout the year) is called Equipment Operator I; those positions haven’t been fully staffed since August, 2014! Our mechanic position hasn’t been filled since that same July!

Part of the problem is that workers of this type and skill set are in high demand in the overheated Colorado construction market; if you’ve driven through certain areas of Denver lately you can’t help but be impressed with the new housing projects and commercial developments.

That demand has more than offset any decreased hiring (or even layoffs) in the oil and gas fields of Weld County and other Colorado locations.

So although the skilled employees are out there, they aren’t coming to Gilpin County. And most of the reason, we suspect, is the County pay scale.

The County’s two most recent salary adjustments, welcome though they were, were flat, across-the-board increases, very helpful for those lower-range employees trying to make ends meet, but less attractive to those specially skilled employees like these who can find a host of employment opportunities at an ever-increasing starting salary.

Then, too, while we are also competing with other governments and agencies like the Colorado Department of Transportation, for these Public Works employees, the increasingly lucrative private sector jobs also tend to be weekdays only, which is important to many workers with families. Our Public Works crews can be called out day or night, especially during snow season.

So at the next Commissioners meeting on June 30, the Commissioners will consider a “Request to Review/Resurvey a Position” for these two jobs: Equipment Operator I and Mechanic.

Sometimes these forms are used when a job’s duties have changed dramatically, but in this case the request was needed because we just can’t find any good applicants for these positions.

The Commissioners will have to consider whether there are structural changes that could be made to help in the hiring process, but absent such simple solutions the next best approach may be to conduct what is called a salary survey. That will show us if the salaries we are paying for these positions are greatly out of line with what such workers can receive elsewhere in the metro area.

If that’s the Commissioners’ decision, and if the salary survey indeed shows a marked disparity between the pay we are offering for such positions and what the employees qualified to fill them can receive elsewhere, then the Commissioners have some hard choices to make, with both short-term and long-term budget implications.

Salaries and associated benefit costs are by far the largest element of the County’s budget, so tinkering with them at all is always a scary undertaking.     But the Commissioners recognize that we can’t provide the services which are expected by our residents without competent and dedicated employees, and the County will have to take whatever steps prove necessary to attract and retain that sort of workforce.