Boards Approve Merger Between UCHRA, UCDD

A merger between the Upper Cumberland Human Resource Agency and Upper Cumberland Development District was approved Tuesday morning.

According to UCHRA interim executive director Mark Farley, the merger creates two deputy directors – one for each organization – with a finance director and executive director over both. Farley said Rebecca Harris will oversee the UCHRA while Tommy Lee will oversee the UCDD. Ginger Stout of the UCDD will serve as the Finance Director for both agencies.

“We’re seeing a lot of joint cooperation between the agencies that we really hadn’t seen in the past,” Farley said. “We think we can capitalize on it and bring better services to the Upper Cumberland and hopefully expand those services.”

Farley said the merger would have minimal impact on the employees of either agency, as some UCHRA positions will be transferred to the UCDD.

“We’ve tried to structure it as such that the employees won’t be harmed,” Farley said. “Because you’re going to retain two separate legal entities, for 99 percent of the employees, their benefits won’t change. They’re not changing positions. It probably will just effect a small handful, anywhere around 10 to 12 employees that may have to move from organization to the other.”

Farley said positions that are similar between the two agencies may be merged as well, resulting in “a few” layoffs. However, current benefits for employees will remain the same for those within both agencies.

“To do something along this line, you really need to be able to make financial sense,” Farley said. “What you want to do is streamline where you have one administrative entity doing both jobs where you had two separate groups before.”

Both the UCHRA executive committee and the UCDD voted unanimously to approve the merger. The agencies will still operate separately with the executive director and Stout overseeing operations of the two.

Discussions about a possible merger between the two agencies began after the termination of former UCHRA executive director Luke Collins.