There may be two less elected county officials following the 2014 election.
Tooele County Commissioners will consider an ordinance at their Dec. 3 meeting to combine the county clerk’s office and the auditor’s office into one clerk/auditor office and combine the county recorder with the county surveyor.
The move is expected to save the county money by eliminating the salary of two elected officials and create additional efficiencies in the consolidated departments, according to Bruce Clegg, Tooele County Commission chairman.
“Combining elected offices is a common practice in other counties,” he said. “We need to take this step to show our citizens that we have done everything possible to save money before we go through the process to create the new municipal services tax.”
The tentative 2014 budget includes $1.5 million in revenue from a new municipal services tax collected from property taxpayers in unincorporated Tooele County, or around an additional $62 per $150,000 of assessed value for residential property.
The state allows counties to levy a municipal services tax to help pay for road work, law enforcement, animal control, engineering and other city-related services the county provides in unincorporated areas.
The Tooele County clerk and auditor’s salaries for 2013 were set by a resolution of the county commission at $79,654 each. The county surveyor’s salary, a part-time position, was set by the same resolution at $32,932.
Utah state classifies counties according to population, with Tooele County fitting into the third class designation for counties between 31,000 and 125,000 residents. Other third class counties include Cache, Box Elder, Iron, Summit and Uintah counties.
Second class counties, with a population of between 125,000 and 700,000, include Utah, Davis, Weber and Washington counties.
All the second class counties, which are larger than Tooele County, have a combined clerk and auditor, said Clegg.
According to the Utah Association of Counties resource guide on county government, the combining of the county clerk with the county auditor is not unusual in Utah counties. It also states that there is a tendency to combine the surveyor’s office with another elected office, with a strong preference in state statutes for combining the surveyor with the recorder.
The combination of offices will allow for efficiencies in sharing workloads and covering for vacation, sick leave, and other absences, according to Tooele County Commissioner Shawn Milne.
“As efficiencies have shrunk some elected offices to only two or three people, it is hard to cover absences for leaves and meetings,” he said.
Other than the elimination of two elected positions, the consolidation effort is not planned to eliminate non-elected positions or create a reduction in force, Milne added.
Other county officials are not so sure about the combination of offices.
“If you talk to the clerk/auditors in the class two counties, you will find that most of them want to separate offices,” said Tooele County Clerk Marilyn Gillette. “Most of them are organized with a deputy over clerk duties and a deputy over auditor duties, so I don’t see that saving a lot of money.”
Gillette points out that while all class two counties have a combined clerk/auditor, all class three counties have the offices separated.
Tooele County Auditor Mike Jensen said his colleagues in counties with combined clerk/auditors feel that often times their auditor duties get over looked while trying to fulfill all the duties of the clerk’s office.
Box Elder County, which is the county closest in population to Tooele County, had an elected assessor/treasurer and an elected clerk/recorder/surveyor prior to 2010 when their county commission created positions for a county assessor, treasurer, clerk, and recorder/surveyor.
Tooele County had a combined clerk/auditor until 1984 when the county commission voted to separate the two positions.
State statute gives the county commission authority to consolidate or separate county offices by ordinance, without a public hearing. However, the county commission can’t displace an elected official in the consolidation process before the end of their term.
The statute requires that any ordinance consolidating or separating county offices must be enacted by Feb. 1 of the year in which county officers are elected and take effect on the first Monday of January in the following year.
If the county commission passes the ordinance to combine offices at their Dec. 3 meeting, it will take effect in 2015, setting the stage for a clerk/auditor and recorder/surveyor race in 2014 that may feature incumbents competing for the same office.
The Tooele County Commission meets Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. in room 321 of the Tooele County building.