HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – The Hill County Commission held their weekly business meeting on Thursday morning and voted to allow the listing of two full-time job postings for local MSU-Extension agents.
The vote was 2-1. Mark Peterson and Diane McLean voted in favor, while Mike Wendland cast the dissenting vote.
This comes after both of Hill County’s Extension Agents decided to step down. Family And Consumer Sciences and 4-H Agent Jasmine Carbajal left the Extension Office at the end of September. Since her departure, it had been unclear if the Commission would support hiring a full-time replacement.
Ag/4-H Agent Tom Allen will retire from his position at the end of the calendar year, and the Commission had intended on advertising that position as a full-time job.
Carbajal’s vacancy has left a void at the Extension Office that Allen has been unable to fill due to his current workload and lack of expertise in the FCS area. For example, an Extension Agent from Liberty County recently traveled to Havre High School to host a Youth Aware of Mental Health class for freshmen.
“I don’t know those type of programs that Jasmine knew to help out there. And it’s really tough,” said Allen, who added that Agents have also had to spend a large amount of time working with the 4-H program. “The number one reason why agents do quit is 4-H and the time it requires. So if you could spread that out a little bit, it helps. It really does. 4-H can really suck you in if you let it. It really can pull you away from your other responsibilities. You have to watch yourself, you really do. At one time, there was a 4-H aide here in the County, which really helped. But that was eliminated, so a bunch of that falls onto the Agents that that aide used to take…It gets to be a lot, more than you expect.”
The Commission floated the idea of having one of the two Agents in a part-time role, arguing that some of what is done on the Family and Consumer Sciences side is redundant with other local organizations.
“I see a lot of redundancy in so many HRDC, Family Connections, Head Start, just go down the list,” McLean said. “There are just tons of agencies that deal with those kinds of things. And I feel like there is a lot of redundancy in that position here in our County. And maybe I’m wrong.”
But the Commission ultimately decided to put listings for both positions as full-time jobs, with Peterson seeming to sway McLean.
“We look at HRDC, you look at a lot of those others, they are all grant funded. They could leave at any time. Where the Extension is a more consistently funded agency. I’m talking about the redundancy before in the past. They do serve some of the same clientele, but in other areas, they don’t,” said Peterson, who argued that finding someone to fill the FCS position on a part-time basis could be difficult and wouldn’t be worth the savings for the County. “And looking at what HRDC does and what the Extension does, even though they have a lot of the same titles, I don’t believe they serve the same people.”
Extension Central Region Department Head Tracy Mosley called into the meeting to speak on the importance of having two full time Extension Agents in Hill County.
“Extension offers way more Family and Consumer Science than an organization like HRDC,” Mosley said. “Most sanitarian offices are permitting and doing inspections and things like that, but they don’t have the time to offer things Jasmine did a lot of. And local businesses are required to have people that are certified as paid food handlers and certified. Some of them take the eight hour class, some of them take the four hour class. And that is not something that an organization like HRDC can do.”
Another irreplaceable thing that Extension does is mental health offerings that come through their affiliations with organizations from across the state.
“I feel like Jasmine created enough partnerships and she was astute enough that she was not duplicating with people,” Mosley said. “She was creating synergy and working with those people. And that’s an expectation of Extension for every single Agent we have, regardless of their discipline.”
Allen says mental health has been a serious issue in the area, and says he knows three or four local ranchers or farmers that have committed suicide in the last five years.
“You talk to most Ag Agents, (mental health help) is not their strongsuit…That’s where these FCS Agents working with their programs out of Bozeman can really help the community.”
The next Hill County Commission business meeting is scheduled for 10 AM on November 19th.
