By Scott Pearson

Staff Writer

The Marshall County Solid Waste committee continues their search for a new director.

The committee interviewed the five candidates who applied for the position at the end of November.

Narrowing the applicants to two after the interviews, the committee voted 4-1 to offer the position to a candidate currently managing a grain elevator operation in Louisiana.

According to committee chair Anna Childress, the candidate decided to turn down the offer, citing the relocation cost and effort. The minimum salary offered by the department was $60,000 per year.

Solid Waste must replace Morgan Thomas as director. Thomas accepted a private sector job offer after the release of an investigation from the State Comptrollers office that found several irregularities within the department, primarily focusing on the use of inmate labor on private property and the hiring of an inmate as a county employee while incarcerated in the county jail.

Commissioner R.L. Williams proposed extending David Hunter's term as interim director for another six months. Hunter is the operations manager at the recycling center and has been serving as director since Thomas' departure.

"I like that idea," said Commissioner Mike Waggoner. "I think within six months we'll have a better vision of a lot of things and maybe some new ideas."

The committee also agreed to Williams' motion to increase Hunter's compensation by $500 per month while he performed the additional duties.

Commissioners on the committee, Childress, Williams, Waggoner, Seth Warf, and Phil Willis, agreed unanimously to both motions.

The committee also voted unanimously to approve a new maintenance position for the department as well. The job duties have been performed for the past few years by inmate Andrew Luna. Luna featured in the Comptroller's report as the inmate hired by the department while incarcerated in the county jail. Due to be released within the new couple of months, replacing Luna's current responsibilities will require Solid Waste to hire a full-time employee to handle the work that he has been doing.

The department also dodged a potentially expensive issue regarding reimbursement of grant funding.

The department recently installed approximately $200,000 worth of equipment to the recycling sorting line in order to boost capacity and productivity. The bulk of the cost was funded by a grant from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

As part of the grant terms, TDEC inspects the equipment to verify installation and operation before releasing the grant funds.

One component of the equipment, a vacuum intended to remove plastic bags from the recycling stream, is still not working properly and since the grant was written with the equipment as one item, any part of it not working properly threatened reimbursement for the entire installation.

The department worked out a 60 day extension with TDEC, who also agreed to separate the working parts of the equipment into separate line items as far as the grant was concerned.

The vendor is shipping a additional part for the vacuum which should modify the air flow, allowing the very lightweight plastic bags to behave as intended in the cyclone.

Any additional work required is free of charge to the county and should be completed in time to meet the state's new deadline.

Hunter did report that, despite the problem, the new equipment was increasing production of recyclables at the center.