Kootenai County airport director asks HR to review reclassification of two positions to handle rising workload

Gaston Patterson, airport director for Kootenai County, asked the Board of Commissioners on June 2 to send two proposed position reclassifications to human resources for review, saying the changes would spread duties currently held by one employee across two roles to handle increased grants, leasing and finance workload.

Patterson described the request as a conversion of currently budgeted positions rather than a request for additional staff. "No additional cost," he told the commissioners, saying the county is already budgeted for a deputy airport director and a compliance administrator and that the proposal would change job titles and descriptions and then return to the board for final approval.

The reclassification request would convert the vacant deputy airport director role to a manager of grants and finance, a role Patterson described as the point person for Federal Aviation Administration, state and local grants and the department's financial administration. The request would also convert a compliance administrator role into a leasing and contracts specialist to handle leases, hangar sales and related real-estate transactions. Patterson said one employee is currently covering both grants/finance and leasing duties, creating a bandwidth issue as the airport processes more transactions and grant reporting.

Patterson presented a three- to five-year staffing outlook that could include reinstating a deputy director and expanding operations as the airport grows. He said the proposed grades for the two reclassified positions would likely yield a budget savings this fiscal year and into the next cycle once graded by HR.

Commissioners pressed for more detail before final approval. One commissioner said the request had been discussed informally for months and asked why the item was presented with a sense of urgency now; another said portions of the proposed manager's duties appeared to overlap with a deputy director role and asked the director to clarify how the responsibilities would be split. Patterson and commissioners agreed to meet offline for further review. Patterson said the current ask was for HR to review the job descriptions and grade them, after which the county would return to the board for final approval and any hiring decisions.

The board did not take a formal vote to approve hiring or to adopt final job grades at the June 2 meeting; the action before the board was to refer the proposed job descriptions to HR for classification review.