The Board of Commissioners held a meeting on February 26, 2018, during which the Board voted to update the organizational chart to reflect operational changes. The County had recently adapted a completely revised organizational chart in November of 2017 that was recommended by Interim County Administrator Steve Layson. Layson had told the board at that time that additional tweaking and changes might be needed as he worked to evaluate the best operational structure for the county.  The change removes two areas from the previous organizational chart, as the County will transfer the functions and management oversight of Animal Control and Code Enforcement to the Butts County Sheriff’s Office, effective immediately. Board members met with Sheriff Gary Long in executive session and following the session, voted 4-0 to transfer both under the management of the Sheriff.

Currently the Sheriff’s Office provides a high level of support to the Animal Shelter, including inmate details to clean and care for the facilities that house dogs and cats for adoption. With the resources available from the Sheriff’s Office, it was felt that the department would see improvements in operations and efficiency by facilitating this move and the Sheriff’s Office has a number of ideas on ways they can improve the services, facility, response and outreach of the department.

The Sheriff’s Office will also be bringing Code Enforcement under its roof. This area, which has been under the purview of the Planning and Development Department for many years, is responsible for enforcing local laws, known as ordinances, as well as code violations. With the resources of the Sheriff’s Office and having personnel fielded around the clock, code violations should be able to be handled more efficiently and concluded in a more timely manner.

The new organizational chart adopted Monday is shown below: