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Probation director tells county board a single vacancy strains supervision of high-risk clients
Summary
Probation Director Gary Faucet told commissioners that high-risk caseloads (repeat DWI, domestic abusers, pretrial felons) require lengthy training and intensive supervision and that keeping the senior probation position filled is critical; he supported waiving the two-month pause for that role.
Gary Faucet, Pine County's probation director, told commissioners that the county's highest-risk supervision caseloads require specialized training and substantial staff time, and that vacancies create operational risk.
"...it's the highest risk, people in our department," Faucet said, describing clients who must be seen weekly in the community and the extra evening/weekend work required by intensive supervision programs. He said the position being discussed required months to recruit and train—one recent employee left 11 months into the role and still had not learned everything—and that the department would need roughly three months from posting to have a trained replacement in place.
Faucet outlined how the department manages workload when an agent is absent (moving work within the team rather than relying on a regional contractor model that no longer exists) and explained that certain duties such as bail studies, pre-sentence investigations and cognitive-skills classes are time-consuming and tied to Department of Corrections funding. Commissioners approved waivers for select HHS and probation roles later in the meeting.
The board recorded no expanded mitigation plan beyond emphasizing waivers and internal reassignment; staff were asked to continue exploring recruitment and training timelines to reduce service disruption for high-risk supervision caseloads.
