Waste district hires Rhodehamel

Jay County Solid Waste Management District has a new employee.
The district board in a brief meeting Monday afternoon hired Samantha Rhodehamel to staff its office three days a week and handle other administrative responsibilities.
Rhodehamel, a rural Portland resident, will begin her work Wednesday in the position, now referred to as coordinator. She will get at least two days of training from outgoing director Ronyelle Edwards.
A 2015 graduate of Ball State University with a bachelor’s degree in natural resources and environmental management, Rhodehamel has worked since 2008 as an office manager at Como Service. She also served an internship with Jay County Emergency Management.
Board members Jeanne Houchins, Doug Inman, Jim Zimmerman, Faron Parr, Tom Johnson and Bill Gibson, with Randy Geesaman absent, voted unanimously to hire Rhodehamel on the recommendation of the group’s executive committee.
She will be paid an hourly rate of $16 and will staff the district office from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Wednesday. Her duties will include handling finances, state and federal reporting, the scheduling of recycling trailers and a variety of other duties.
Board members said they felt it was best to switch the position from salaried to hourly — Edwards had received a salary of $30,000 per year — in order to fairly compensate for hours worked outside of the norm. Those include staffing at district initiatives such as Tox Away Day as well as working at community events like Jay County Fair.
"We’re changing it to hourly basically because we expect the coordinator to be at the fair, to be (at the free shredding day)," said Houchins, the board president. "That’s extra hours, so to be fair about all that I think we need to have that as an hourly position."
Rhodehamel was one of seven applicants, three of which were interviewed by the executive committee last week.
Edwards spent just over a year in the position she was hired for in late July 2015. The district board decided last month to give Edwards a 30-day termination notice after she accepted another job that would make her unable to staff the office during its regular hours.