New Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte, R-Hermann, learned first hand prior to his inaugural session that things don’t always go as planned. In his initial meeting with Gasconade County Road Department employees — which was intended to be a sit-down discussion regarding the department’s 2023 operating budget — Schulte discovered that patience is a big virtue for county government administrators.

As Southern District Associate Commissioner Jerry Lairmore, R-Owensville, explained during the Commission session Thursday morning in Owensville City Hall, the discussion that was planned on the budget quickly evolved into a talk about personnel matters. The budget discussion, well, didn’t get too far into the specific. 

“We wanted to go through some of the budget stuff,” Lairmore said, adding that personnel issues took up most of the time he and Schulte were at the department prior to the start of the Commission session. Northern District Associate Commissioner Jim Holland, R-Hermann, was out of town and unavailable for the meeting.

The agency employees, Lairmore said, came to the monthly early-morning meeting with questions.

“We had a lot of employees with a lot of questions, mostly budgetary” questions, he said.

A lot of those questions were directed to the new presiding commissioner, which Lairmore noted wasn’t completely fair to Schulte because he had yet to get familiar with the county’s budget process.

Schulte was to scheduled to begin delving into the annual county government funding process Monday morning (Jan. 9), along with Lairmore and Holland, at the courthouse. The various departments were scheduled to have their budget requests submitted to the County Clerk’s Office by Friday.

County Clerk Lesa Lietzow is the chief budget officer; she and her staff are charged with matching departmental funding requests with projected revenues for the coming year and crafting a proposed operating budget for the Commission. The three county administrators will refine the spending blueprint and take final action later this month.

The County Clerk’s Office will begin writing checks based on the new budget in February.

Meanwhile, much of the Commission’s session Thursday morning dealt with Road Department and transportation matters.

Regarding the department, Lairmore noted that staffing has taken a hit recently. 

“We’re actually down, but we don’t know if we’re going to replace them because we’re doing well” with the current roster of employees, he said.

Much of the employees’ concern centered on the anticipated salary increase in 2023. Lairmore said he pointed out, as he has in recent weeks, that the 3-percent raise being considered is simply “a starting point.” That number could change as the Commission works its way through the funding requests, he explained.

Schulte also learned that Road Department crews aren’t the only ones taking care of county roads. In the Gasconade and Morrison areas, there is the Special Road District 4, which cares for only a small amount of county gravel roads in the northwest portion of the county. The Commission officially appointed Sam Voss to the Special Road District Board of Trustees. Voss had failed to remember to file for his seat — one of three on the board — by the filing deadline late last month, Lietzow explained. She noted that after researching state law, the statutes covering special road districts allow seats to be filled by County Commission appointment.

Special Road Districts are not unusual; some counties have several while a dozen or so Missouri counties have a township form of government in which the various townships are responsible for tax collection and county road maintenance. Township counties do not have a road department.

Lietzow said she’s “a little surprised” that Special Road District 4 remains in place, rather than choosing to disband and let the county Road Department add those few roads to the list of other county roads. That was the case several years ago with a second special road district in Gasconade County, the county clerk noted. That special district covered the Mud Creek area.