01/18/2000

New Employee - Tom Ingram, currently public works director in Martin, will join MTAS as public works consultant in Knoxville beginning March 1. Tom has been with Martin since August 1997. Before that he was with the Nashville office of Allen & Hoshall for six years and Barge, Waggoner for eight years. As a consulting engineer he has strong experience in water, wastewater, and street and roadway design. In Martin, the public works department is full service including: water, sewer, gas, streets, and solid waste. Sharon and John especially join the rest of us in welcoming Tom because it's the first time in a long time that we've had our full complement of three public works consultants.

Recruiting - We will start recruiting for a Technical Services Librarian to replace Beth Sanderbeck this week. We will receive applications through February 18, conduct the interviews early in March, and hope to have the position filled during April. If you know anyone who might be interested, please ask them to call Frances.

Chapter 1101 - We discussed this briefly at our staff meetings. Here's the list of the counties that the 1101 committee is predicting will go to mediation: Blount, Bradley, Dickson, Fayette, Greene, Hamblen, Hamilton, Hawkins, Houston, Knox, Loudon, Marion, Robertson, Sullivan, Sumner, Williamson, and Wilson. This list changes daily, but those were the predictions as of January 13.

LGPAC meets January 26. It should give approval at that time to: Gibson, Henderson, Madison, Obion, and Stuart whose plans are on Don Waller's desk. In addition, according to a TACIR survey, several additional counties have submitted their plans to LGPAC (our guess is that as of last week, they had not arrived in Nashville). These are Benton, Cannon, Carter, Fentress, Pickett, and Sequatchie.

Assessment Center Training - Off and on over the years, we have helped cities conduct assessment centers to help make hiring decisions. Now, we're going to contract for training for ourselves to improve this service. The training is extensive and will take place February 14 - 18, February 21 - 26, and February 29 - March 3. The final training is part of an actual assessment and will probably be held later in March. Rick Stokes is coordinating this program. Taking the class with him will be: Gary, Pat, Jeff, Mike, SharonR, Ray, and Rex. Understandably, they will all be a little hard to get in touch with during February.

The result is that we will be much better able to assist cities in making good hiring decisions.

Bingham Fund Donation - Bob Freeman, executive director of the East Tennessee Development District recently made a personal donation of $5,000 to the Bingham Fund. In addition, he gave $5,000 to the CTAS fund. Very impressive.

Direct Deposit - Here's an email we received from Gary Baskette.
The University has completed a review of it's payroll operations, effort analysis, and cash management. As a result, it has been decided to move toward a mandated direct deposit program. The first requirement will be that all new employees hired after April 1, 2000 will be placed on direct deposit. Phase II will be to convert all existing employees to direct deposit as of July 1, 2000.

Please inform your staff of this operational policy decision. For those employees not currently on direct deposit, they will need to fill out direct deposit enrollment cards and supply two copies of their bank deposit slip to this office. Enrollment cards will be provided to you on request. Most departments maintain a supply of these cards. If you need additional cards, please e-mail Ms. Jill Watson and she will mail them to you.

Currently only about 10-15% of our employees are not on direct deposit. If any of you or your staff have questions or need assistance in this conversion, please let me know.

If you need to convert to direct deposit (and we all will by July 1), please contact Sharon Merryman.