The Pulaski County Council may not have been looking closely enough at hiring in recent years. During Monday’s discussion on the county’s finances, Council Member Ken Boswell pointed out that a hiring freeze from a decade ago is actually still in effect.
“It was either in 2009 or 2010 when we did the workforce reduction back then,” he explained. “There was a council member who made a motion to have a hiring freeze in Pulaski County and that it would take a super-majority, which would be a two-thirds vote, to thaw that freeze. And that freeze has never been thawed. It is still on the books. It’s still out there.”
Council Member Kathi Thompson said she’d just learned about the two-thirds vote requirement recently. “And lots of people have asked for staff, new staff or a half a staff to make a staff a full staff or whatever,” she noted. “That resolution is still in place. Each one of those has to be dealt with as a super-majority.”
The council members said the county is facing its biggest financial challenge in a decade.
