The county is working on a plan officials hope will improve its management structure and streamline reporting.

The proposal, which hasn’t been discussed in-depth publicly, would promote four to five department heads to super department-head status and have them report to the county manager, instead of having the county manager deal directly with 16 or some odd department heads.

This concept makes sense, and streamlining reporting should improve communication, but we’re curious to hear how much the change will cost. One commissioner said the idea isn’t to increase salaries, but we’re not sure department heads are going to be willing to take on more responsibility for no extra salary.

Increasing salaries slightly is fine if the county can prove that the changes will result in real improvement. We’ll be curious to see how the process plays out over the next couple of months as the Board decides what form of government it wants moving forward.

We hope a compromise can be reached where everyone is on board. Overall, we’ve been impressed with the way this particular Board of Commissioners is actually working together, which is a sharp contrast to the prior group.