Moving forward on something under discussion for years without any real advancement, the Jefferson County Commission voted unanimously July 25 to create a recreation planning arm.
Rather than hiring a new staffer, though, the commission agreed to let County Planner LaDana Hintz and GIS/mapping coordinator Melissa Morris tackle the job, something they themselves requested. All of the job duties envisioned for the recreation planner fall within areas covered by GIS and planning, said Morris.
Morris, a former BLM employee, said she and Hintz had discussed the idea and believed that they could take on the new tasks within their budgets and hours. Some of that will be possible because there are planning tasks previously performed manually that can easily be handled through GIS programs, they said. The county may need to offload website maintenance tasks currently performed by Morris to a contractor, she said. But that might need to happen anyway, Morris said, because the website work has “expanded exponentially” due to the successes of county event coordinator Bruce Binkowski.
