Elk County Employees

[W. Gray]

I was not aware that Harry Truman had business interests in Wilson County.

However, whatever it was he must have flopped because he was supposed to have been a total business failure.

Truman had a lot more education than some early presidents but he was the only twentieth century president without a college degree. He did have a high school diploma though because he graduated from the same high school I did.

Besides Truman, nine other presidents did not have a college degree, including Washington and Lincoln.

Some folks might not be aware that Bess Truman hated Washington DC and stayed away most of the time. She and Harry wrote each other most of the time while he was in the Senate and the White House.

She played almost no official role as the first lady.

[Varmit]

Maybe we should go to 3 days a week.   13.5 hours is about all the dry not raining time we have been having lately.    


Road Crews already work 10 hour days, and that is plenty long enough


How is it that you can't build a pond with out the division of water resources all up in your business but you can channel the water down a non natural county road and blame it on not getting paid very well?

yeah, I'm sure they do that on purpose.

So if you quit trying to confront your bosses every time one says something you don't appreciate and do something that will get them to pat you on the back the better off both will be

maybe a little support from the public, instead of bitching about how the crews don't work, or what a crap job they are doing might encourage them to do better work. 

A lot of the problem is the ignorance of us the general public.   Maybe is the accepted norm that you are still getting donuts at 7:30.  Why should I care if you road equipment every day?  Just because my watch says it is 2:15 that doesn't mean that it takes two hours to get back to the yard.  

You're right, ignorance IS alot of the problem.  Ignorant about just how much the crews have to do.  Ignorant to the fact that they have to drop what they're doing because Joe Farmer called and complained about a pot hole.  Ignorant that they spend 2-3 days fixing a feed road that maybe 2-3 people actually use. Ignorant that the lack of manpower is due in a large part to the low pay, district 1 has 3, count'em 3 employees.

You want to talk about ditches, ok, lets talk.  Lets talk about FENCES being to close to the road for an adquate ditch to be made.  Lets talk about the trees landowners allow to grow into those fences which make grading and mowing impossible sometimes, not to mention the fact that those same trees clog the ditches.  So now  the roadcrews having to go in and cut those trees (that are on private land)  just so they can perform even minimum maintance on the roads.

Yes, they do drive the roads when it is raining, thats how they know where the washes are. They also take this time to fix broken signs and reflectors, that somehow always end up getting SHOT!

OH and just a little FYI, that "windrow of crap" is left so that they don't have to haul rock over an entire road everytime they grade.  Oh, and God forbid if they leave it on the wrong side of the freakin road.

Maybe, just maybe those fields that back up behind that 3 foot culvert should have some drainage system build into them, BY THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE LAND, afterall, that is where the water is coming from.

Again with the one shop theory, it makes no sense for the crews that work in say longton to drive to howard in the morning just to drive back to howard in the evening, or for the grenola crew to drive to howard just to have to turn around and drive back to grenola to work then go back to howard.

OH, and the whole donut thing, come on...what does it hurt for these guys to take 5 minutes to grab a snack before they head out for the day?

[S-S]

Ernie went by the house at almost 9 o'clock the other night in a road grader. That's job devotion. You think a 10-hour day is long? Try having 2 small children and they only see their father a few hours in the evening because he works 12-hour days 6 days a week at the rock quarry.

[Diane Amberg]

You folks don't have roadway easements that include the drainage ditches?  Not that the road crews should have to cut trees, but they should have access for maintenance. I was serious about prison labor.They should have crews out there cutting those ditch trees and working on those ditches.

[Varmit]

Ernie went by the house at almost 9 o'clock the other night in a road grader. That's job devotion. You think a 10-hour day is long? Try having 2 small children and they only see their father a few hours in the evening because he works 12-hour days 6 days a week at the rock quarry.

Actually, I have 3 children, 2boys and a girl.  If Ernie wants to work until 9 o'clock, thats his choice.  Sorry, but I am not going to put my job before my family.  I know about long days, I served in the army. 

[Tobina+1]

BillyakaVarmit; I agree with a lot of what you're saying.  It always puzzled me why the landowners can't be responsible for the trees along the road... on THEIR side of the fence!  Sometimes I feel like it's "farmers" against "county".  Why can't we all work together to solve the problems?  If people are complaining about water running across the road, why doesn't the county work with the landowner to help dam up part of it, and the county could put in a culvurt in the right location (rather than a 25-yard wide path of water running across the road)?  It's a matter of everyone complaining about everyone else rather than just getting along and solving the problems.  I also don't understand why some of the lesser-used roads get graded first (or at all)... squeaky wheel lives on that road?  I have a culvert on the road at the end of our driveway that is slowly washing away on the sides, making the road more and more narrow.  I'm sure that just 20-30 minutes of scraping the ditches would help solve that problem... before it completely washes the road away... but I'm too worried to ask!  No, it's not a big problem now, but I'm afraid that if I wait too long, it will become one (and that road is pretty highly used... especially for big trucks).  But I don't want to become one of the "squeaky wheels", either.  I'm half tempted to just fix it myself with the ranch skid loader. 
Question (hypothetical):  Do the county workers work long hours because they need the money with the low pay they're getting, or would they prefer less hours and hiring another employee to help ease the workload?
Also, it seems to me that the county relys on people calling in and "complaining" (or maybe "reporting" is a more correct word), because it's impossible to know where all the bad spots and potholes are all the time?

[Varmit]

Tobina, I agree that we need to work together.  What really gets my dander up is when folks complain without understanding the issues the roadcrews face, short handed, weather, workload, etc.  Funding is a major one.  We just don't have the money for projects like new bridges or whatever. 

As to your questions...1) I can't answer for the other employees, but, I work 10 days bcause the powers that be figure that 4 10's is cheaper than 5 8's. which is fine with me. I don't think it would do any good to hire more people only to cut work hours.  We need more folks at the same rate of hours. We could put more people to work in different spots, getting more work done.

2) The road crews know their roads.  we know that after a storm or whatever there is going to be washes, and bad spots.  The problem, at least to me, is when people call in and want THEIR road fixed NOW.  Well, when 10 people call in 10 different spots none of them seem to understand that they are going to have to wait in line like everybody else. 

The crews know that there is ditch work to be done.But if they stop maintaining the roads in order to focus on ditches then the roads will be complete shambles thus inspiring more "reporting".  Its a catch 22.

One of the reasons I work on the road crew is that although the pay is low there are perks that you won't find on other, better paying jobs.  For example, I don't see Rubbermaid or Boeing letting you come in late or take a day to care for sick, lost, or runaway cattle.  It seems to me that as long as you don't abuse that, the county is okay with it.  I like the fact that I have a boss that is willing to get his hands dirty with the rest of the workers.  I like not having to drive 50 miles one way to get to work. I have heard the job described as "the best worst paying job I've had" and I agree. There are some things that i would like to see changed, but that comes with any job. And barring me getting fired, I don't plan on leaving.

[ddurbin]

This is somewhat off-thread, but I wanted to respond to Diane's questions about prison labor.  Yes, the Kansas Department of Corrections does provide work crews to local governmental agencies.  Inmates must be minimum-custody, and for the most part work for other state agencies such as Ks Dept of Transportation and Ks Dept of Wildlife and Parks, or for cities and/or counties.  Work is generally confined to an area within an hour of one of the eight major correctional facilities, or around one of the various satellite facilities.  Due to budget cuts, just about all the satellite facilities have had or are facing having their operations suspended and the inmates relocated into the main facilities.  In recent years, inmate work crews have provided around 1 million man-hours of labor.  For their efforts, the inmates earn either $.75 or $1.05 PER DAY.  I've been an employee of KDOC for 23 years, and this level of "incentive pay" for the inmates has not changed during that time.

[W. Gray]

From reading the Wichita Eagle web this morning, the El Dorado correctional facility is closing down.

El Dorado and Butler County will lose all of their free labor.

One of those entities said it would cost them $125,000 per year to replace the free labor.

[greatguns]

When did 40 hours a week become long hours?