Victor Collins has spent half his life working for the county road department.
After a nearly six-year hiatus, he is returning to lead it once again.
Supervisors voted 4-0 Monday to rehire Collins as road manager. He retired in May 2017 after serving 30 years with the department, including the last seven at its helm.
He will make $45 per hour in the full-time position, which works out to $93,600 annually based on 40-hour work weeks. He will start work “as soon as possible,” according to the board vote.
“People have been asking me, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’” he told supervisors during his public interview Monday afternoon. “That’s the reason I came back.”
Collins will replace Hal Baggett, whom supervisors fired Jan. 3 following a string of concerns regarding his leadership skills and ability to manage employees. Baggett was hired in 2017 after Collins retired.
The county has operated with an interim road manager for more than a month while advertising for a permanent replacement. Collins and road department equipment operator Tony Dawson were the only applicants, and the board interviewed both Monday before its vote.
During Collins’ interview, he took specific aim at the results of Baggett’s tenure, though he never used his predecessor’s name. Drainage problems have increased across the county, he said, and roads built in the last few years are “not what they should have been.”
“What I’ve seen is a lack of communication between management and workers,” Collins said.
Once in place, Collins said he would improve that communication and streamline department operations to get more done better and with less waste.
“It’s knowing what you’ve got to do, knowing what you’ve got to have and managing the guys to go out and do their due diligence,” he said.
Collins, 60, said he also would try to identify and train his successor as part of a longer-term vision for the department.
“My plans are to train someone to do this job, but they have to be willing to learn the whole job … and the right way to do it.”
Board president Orlando Trainer, who represents District 2, said Collins’ hire comes with some immediate benefits few others could have provided, given his skill set and previous experience in the position.
“There’s not going to be a learning curve,” Trainer said. “He can come in at the onset and make solid recommendations.”
Not every board member supported Collins’ hire, however.
District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller wasn’t present for the road manager vote Monday. But in an email sent to her colleagues before the meeting that The Dispatch also received, she said she “will be a no vote” because she believed the position should be advertised again for more applicants.
Further she claimed Collins — a self-employed construction worker — had conflicts because he had completed work through his private business for a county supervisor while he wasn’t employed with the county. Also, she claimed Collins is related to the mother-in-law of an employee in the county administrator’s office.
Speaking to The Dispatch, board attorney Rob Roberson said neither of those issues presented legal or policy conflicts for Collins taking the road manager job. While the county has a policy against nepotism, he said it does not apply in this situation since Collins and the relative are not in the same department.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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