Commissioners Vote Down Training Incentive

White County Commissioners will not receive a bonus for their required training this year.

Commissioners considering a $600 incentive per commissioner, or a total of $9,000. Commissioner Dakota White said the training bonus should go to other places rather than their own pocket.

“$9,000 is a lot of money regardless of what your budget is and $9,000 can do a lot for another department instead of us as commissioners,” White said. “We should want to do the training to better serve our constituents that vote us in.”

The vote failed on a 8-5 vote. White said the money could be better spent on improving the county’s departments and other essential services.

“Right now a hot topic is our animal shelter,” White said. “we have quite a few volunteer fire departments. We have many many employees that could use a pay increase. I’m not saying that $9,000 could fix that but a lot of small decisions make one big decision much easier.”

Commissioners began discussions on the issue several weeks ago, an attempt to make sure all commissioners completed the required training. Those commissioners who had already completed the training would also have been compensated.

“We just have to be money-conscious and money-oriented with our decisions because we have roughly 30,000 people in this county and we represent them,” White said. “and we need to represent them well.