Commissioners considering adding county manager position

El Paso is one step closer to creating a county manager position.

The county’s human resources department Monday presented three options for restructuring the county’s organizational chart.

“Professionalizing management at El Paso County,” said County Judge Veronica Escobar. “We are one of the few organizations in the community, and we are one of the few urban counties in the state, that does not utilize professional management — and we’ve paid a price for that.”

The goal is to streamline the county’s delegation processes and prevent some of its recent logistical headaches. All three options create a county budget and finance department, whose responsibilities now fall to the auditor’s office, which is currently under the oversight of the Council of Judges. The new department would answer to commissioners court.

“We oversee a small percentage of department heads at the county,” Escobar said. “That’s true. The vast majority of people who lead and run departments are elected by citizens of the community. But the commissioners court oversees 100 percent of their travel, 100 percent of their staffing requests, 100 percent of their facilities needs.”

Proposal No. 3 was by far the most radical change — an all-out county manager system. A “chief administrator” would oversee the county’s ten or so department heads, including the new budget department, and be paid about $177,000 a year, plus benefits. This option would cost the county an estimated additional $254,000 a year from the current setup — more than doubling or even tripling the first two options.

“One of the things that we voted on last year, we didn’t have any options,” said County Commissioner Carlos Leon. “There’s a lot of reasons. One of the biggest reasons was the area of the expense, just for the office and assistants and what have you.”

“If we have internal staff … that we can promote to these positions, there will be additional savings, so that will rack up the savings,” Escobar said. “And frankly it doesn’t include the savings that this person will achieve in helping us get in front of issues before they become a costly crisis.”

First Assistant County Auditor Wally Hardgrove’s name came up casually during discussion Monday. He’s worked for the county for about 25 years and told ABC-7 he would be interested in the chief administrator job, depending on which option commissioners choose.

“And generating policy ideas that, over the long term, will allow us, the people held responsible by the public, to have more control over expenditures,” Escobar said.

Vince Perez was one of three commissioners ABC-7 spoke with who like the county manager system. Perez told ABC-7 that Hardgrove is one of the most knowledgeable people in the state on county government. But Perez wants to make sure the chief administrator has not only budget acumen, but also the personality to implement the court’s policies.

“And I’m so grateful that there’s a realization that there’s a better way to do things,” Escobar said. “I think the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

Commissioners will discuss the options Thursday and likely take action Monday, July 21.