Supervisors unanimously voted to name Roger Short the county’s interim recreation manager Friday.
The vote follows the board tabling the matter on Monday, because the county had not created a job description for the position.
County Administrator Ralph Billingsley brought the matter before the board again at a special-called meeting Friday, with a job description in-hand. Short will fill the role from May 1 to Sept. 30, when Lowndes County is set to break from an inter-local agreement with the city of Columbus that governs the Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority. The job will pay $36,000, which is half of what the permanent position will pay annually after the split.
Supervisors issued the county’s intention to withdraw from the inter-local agreement governing CLRA last fall.
Short, a former CLRA director, will oversee maintenance at the soccer complex in downtown Columbus and help the county prepare for its transition to running its own parks.
“The only managing of facilities that I will be doing at this point is we’re going to immediately take over the soccer complex maintenance,” Short said. “We’re going to facilitate the city. The city will continue to run their programs there, but I’ll take over grounds maintenance, chemical spraying and that kind of stuff.”
While the city and county are splitting, Short said he wants to maintain a positive relationship with the city recreation system.
“I want the transition to go smooth,” Short said. “(CLRA Director Greg Lewis) and I have talked quite a bit during the last week, and we’re both on the same page for this. We just want to make sure we’re not adversaries. We want to be positive influences on each other, make sure this thing goes well, make sure the county is treated fairly and make sure the city is treated fairly as well. That’s our primary goal.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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