County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner

Part II - Job of Sole Commissioner-continued from last week.

Q. Someone called this week to ask if since I was so busy, would more commissioners help with the job duties and take a load off of me.  The short answer is “NO”.  I will address this issue in depth in a couple of weeks in Part IV of this series.    

Q.  What type and how many meetings are you required to attend as commissioner?
A.  As commissioner, I am either on or ex officio member of many boards and agencies. All of these have either monthly or quarterly meetings that I try to attend.  It is impossible to attend them all, but I try to attend as many as possible.  I also have some of my staff attend for me sometimes.

Q. Exactly what are these groups and meetings that you have to attend?
A.  While it is impossible to think of all of them, here are most. Member or ex officio member : Union County Board of Health, New Hope Counseling Advisory Board, Anti-Drug Coalition Board, Georgia Mountains Regional Development Center Board, Camp E-Mu-Lak-U Board,  Byron Herbert Reece Society Board and Executive Committee, Chairman, Joint Development Authority of Union, Towns, and Fannin Counties, Chamber of Commerce, Union County Development Authority, Emergency Food and Shelter Program Board, E911 Advisory Board,  Leadership Union Board, Union County Governmental Finance Corporation, Union County Building Authority.

Q. Are all the meetings in Blairsville?
A. No, they are not.  I am also a member of some region and statewide committees.  GebCorp advisory committee, with responsibility of directing statewide county employee retirement fund options, North Georgia Resource Management Authority,  Assoc. of  County Commissioners of Georgia State Board of Managers, executive committee member and third vice president,  ACCG Natural Resources Policy Committee, National  Association of Counties (NACo) Environment, Energy and Land Use Committee, Georgia EPD Stream Buffer and watershed protection buffer committee.

Then when you have a particular issue in the county such as the one we have had with the watershed protection stream buffers, all the meetings, emails and phone calls associated with that must be accomplished in between all of these other meetings.  In the meantime you still have phone calls, emails, letters to write and meetings with the public.

Q.  How can you possibly keep up with all of these meetings?
A. As I said, you can not always attend them all, but I make every effort to attend most of them.  That is how I am able to understand all facets of this job and keep up on the latest issues that are occurring in the local, state and national arena.  While it takes a tremendous amount of time, being a part of all of these organizations is important to be in a position to do a good job as commissioner.

Q. How do you keep up with what is happening in the county when you are out of town?
A. I am able to keep up via computer.  When I am lucky enough to be traveling with someone, I have a wireless internet card on my lap top computer that allows me to communicate directly with my office and send and receive email as I travel down the road.  However, most of the traveling I do is alone. When I am at meetings that require overnight stays, I spend many hours on the computer keeping up with what is going on in the county. While traveling, it also provides an opportunity to catch up on returning phone calls.

Q. How do you keep up with your appointments?
A. If you have ever been to a meeting I missed, you know that I sometimes miss appointments, though not very often.  It is very complicated keeping up with my schedule, but once again, technology allows me to do many things at one time.  My cell phone has a calendar as part of its function.  If I am ever out in the county when someone comes up and asks for an appointment, I can simply look on my phone calendar to see where I am supposed to be and when.  This allows me to make an appointment with the public when I am out in the field, or allows my assistant in the office to make an entry on my calendar from her computer, which is automatically transmitted over the internet to my cell phone calendar. Any entries I make on my phone calendar are automatically transmitted back to the office to her computer. So no matter where I am, my calendar is updated. Few could have ever imagined this type of technology would be available even just a couple of years ago.

However, even with all this, I still manage to miss a few meetings.  Incidentally, I pay for my cell phone and this service out of my own pocket, not the county’s.

Commissioner’s job – To be continued next week.

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