MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Commissioners in Monongalia County have hired Ohio County-based AlignHR to conduct a full audit of personnel management police and procedures. The audit comes at a cost $10,575 and includes every aspect of personnel management for all departments, according to commissioner Sean Sikora.
“It’s going to be comprehensive audit that looks at how we do things across the entire county,” Sikora said. ” It’s going to inform our future decisions as far as where we need to move forward with personnel services.”
Zachary Abraham is a principal with AlignHR and also an Ohio County commissioner. Sikora said the contract was vetted with the Ethics Commission because Abraham is an elected official to ensure no laws or rules would be broken. Sikora said once the Ethics Commission signed off on the deal they felt they had the best possible option for the audit.
“He’s an HR professional that is a commissioner,” Sikora said. “So, he would really be the perfect person to sit down with and have conversations about where county lacks in HR resources.”
Sikora said the study examine all practices to the hiring process including intake procedures, firing, communication, safety management, culture and performance management.
“We want to make sure we’re doing things on a consistent basis across the county,” Sikora said. “So, an employee working in the commission office versus an employee working in the circuit court office have consistent processes where the employee is treated the same.”
Commissioners also announced budget carryover into FY 2022-23 of $12,025,723.00.
“A lot of those are by design- $3.7 million were contingency dollars we are not going to spend,” Sikora said. “And a lot of it were capital projects that were not going to occur in 2022.”
Commissioners also approved Great Lakes Culinary Designs for $8,000 to design an addition to the The Community Food Innovation Center in the Mon County Center at Mylan Park. The kitchen opened last year as a way to help entrepreneurs and home garners develop large quantities of homemade items that could become a for profit business. Now, commissioners will add a preservation kitchen for residents to be able to can and dehydrate foods on a large scale.
“We’re in the process of doing a buildout to add office space the parks and office staff at the Mon County Center,” Sikora said. “So, we were going to go ahead and plan the kitchen buildout at the same time.”