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PAGE 10A PICKENS COUNTY PROGRESS THURSDAY. MAY 20. 2021
Continued From 1A
Genovese
that we take comfort know
ing we will see him again.
We are so thankful for the
many prayers, calls, and mes
sages of condolence we have
received from our friends,
church family, and Peter’s
Walmart family,” Marsicek
said in a written statement.
A memorial was set up at
the entrance of Walmart. A
sign placed beside a flower
arrangement and a photo
graph of Genovese says, ‘‘In
loving memory, you will for
ever be in our hearts.”
His aunt said the family
“opted for giving life through
organ donation. As of now,
we were told he was able to
save seven people and spare
their families the pain we
have experienced. Our family
will deeply miss his kind,
sweet spirit, and gentle
smile.”
The recent pedestrian in
cident has reignited efforts of
Mt. Zion Baptist Church Pas
tor Ben Mock to make that
stretch of North Main Street
in front of his church and into
downtown Jasper safer. Fol
lowing a fatal crash in 2012
and several other accidents in
that area, the pastor launched
efforts to lower the speed
limit and add a stop sign to
the intersection of Old
Philadelphia Road and North
Main nearly a decade ago. He
gathered hundreds of petition
signatures, but kept hitting
brick walls with county lead
ership at the time, he said.
“The speed limit is al
ready 35 miles per hour on
South Main Street and
Refuge Road,” Mock said. “I
don’t understand why it can’t
be reduced on North Main.”
The current speed limit is
45 m.p.h.
“When that speed limit
was created there wasn’t any
thing along that stretch. Now
it’s just as busy as South
Main with the church and
businesses,” he said.
The pastor has already
met with Pickens County
Commission Chair Kris Stan-
cil to discuss his requests for
improved safety measures.
Genovese with cousins Gary Marsicek, III and Jennifer
DiBenedetto. He lived with DiBenedetto on Settlement Rd.
Continued From 1A
Help Wanted
Georgia.com reported Tuesday just over
248,000 job postings, up significantly from
the 70,000 listed before the pandemic started.
In a prepared statement announcing the
state’s economic recovery plan, Georgia
Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said,
“Right now, the state has a historic number
of jobs listed.”
While she noticed the trend for potential
hires to “ghost” employers a few years ago,
Dailey said it has become noticeably worse
during the pandemic.
“Now we’ll have 75 percent of people
scheduled for an interview just not show up,”
she said. “No call. No text. They just won’t
come. Ten to 15 years ago it was unheard of
to not show up for an interview. They’ll just
submit resumes and go through the motions
now. I’d say we’re spending between five to
eight times more than we were to recruit em
ployees during the pandemic. It’s very, very
expensive to recruit in this environment.”
Her recruitment expenses include costs for
drug testing and physical exams when
needed, and job board postings, among other
things. Typically these costs are recouped
when the client starts working, “but if they
don’t start working that doesn’t happen.”
With the additional federal COVID unem
ployment benefits, Dailey said employers
have been taken out of the driver’s seat and
are desperate. In addition to not being able to
hire, employers have to tolerate behavior that
would have been a terminable offense in the
past.
“These employers need their products
built and manufactured, so if someone is a
no-show one day they might overlook it or
other behavior that was previously unaccept
able,” she said.
In an effort to recruit and retain, employ
ers have raised pay and are offering other
sign-on benefits and bonuses - but are still
having problems finding help. The labor
commissioner said the state is seeing “some
of the highest pay scales with enhanced ben
efits and signing bonuses.”
“People want to talk about there not being
livable wages, but a job that did pay $10 an
hour might pay between $13 and $15 now;
that still can’t compete with the effective
minimum wage,” Dailey said.
That “effective minimum wage” is the just
over $ 16 an hour people with full COVID un
employment collect.
“The other problem with this is that while
businesses who are trying to do whatever
they need to do to get employees and give
raises can’t go back and lower pay later,” she
said. “Employers can absorb a little, but with
a three, four, five-dollar-an-hour pay increase
that’s going to make the cost of items and
services go up significantly.”
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Restaurants hit
hardest?
Last week the
Times-Courier’s top
story was the popu
lar Taste of Ellijay
was cancelled be
cause of restaurant
staff shortages. Lo
cally, several restau
rants have had to
close their dining
rooms or close en
tirely for a day or
more because they
are short staffed.
But employee
shortages are im
pacting a wide-
range of businesses,
not just restaurants.
Country Kids day
care owner Ronda
Mullins is also ex
periencing unprece
dented disinterest from
the labor pool.
“I used to have a
stack of applications
for people who want to
work and now I can’t
get anyone,” she said.
The 20 or so em
ployees she does have
are being stretched thin with longer days and
hours.
“We have to have a certain ratio of teach
ers to children per class,” she said, “so it’s not
like we can just go without one in a class. I’m
having to ask my employees to come in ear
lier or take a shorter lunch, work long days,
and paying out overtime. I’m sure they like
having more money but everyone is getting
worn out and stressed.”
Mullins has recently upped her pay, but
still can’t find help. She said she doesn’t want
to have to increase her rates, but that as a
small business owner it might be necessary
to help absorb the cost. She also said her
waiting list for people who want to place their
child at Country Kids is long, with no signs
of easing up.
In the building sector, labor shortages are
being seen as well. Jasper-based Bryan
Payne, owner of B and C Painting & Con
struction, said the opportunity for work in his
field has doubled since the pandemic started,
but that like other employers he can’t find
help and is having to turn away work. Payne
and his small crew do remodeling and paint
ing jobs, many of which are in Big Canoe. He
has five employees but said he’d like to have
at least eight, and runs help wanted ads in this
publication every week with little luck.
“I’ve got five or six jobs waiting on me
now,” Payne said. “We’re a certified, legiti
mate company with good referrals, and I
think I pay well but I can’t
get anyone. I think people
are just sorry, getting that un
employment and no one
wants to work. I’ve noticed it
for the last two years, but it’s
definitely gotten worse dur
ing the pandemic.”
Like the staffing agency
CEO, Payne said he has had
people call to inquire but
never show up.
Dailey, of Employ NOW,
speculates that it could seem
like restaurants are being hit
hardest because they work
directly with the consumer.
“People see and feel that
more,” she said, “but would
n’t notice in the same way
when a manufacturing pro
duction line has to shut
down.”
The impact from those em
ployee shortages result in
items missing from grocery
shelves, longer shipping
times, parts not being manu
factured, and other trickle
down effects, she said.
In her Pickens County of
fice Dailey works primarily
with businesses in the manu
facturing, distribution, and
production sector and is see
ing significantly more prob
lems in those areas than in
the administration and pro
fessional jobs they recruit for
from her Marietta office. She
said the need for manufactur
ing jobs has quadrupled,
while clerical and profes
sional positions aren’t as
abundant.
Pickens County Economic
Development Director Green Suttles said in
the manufacturing sector, they are all in need
in workers.
“If you call those classic manufacturing
jobs I’d say they need at least one to two peo
ple in the smaller businesses, and in the larger
ones more than that,” he said.
COVID benefits, or not enough people?
While employers we interviewed feel fed
eral COVID unemployment is to blame for
the workforce problems, Pickens County
Economic Development Director Green Sut
tles said it’s also possible
“we’re running out of people
to work.”
Suttles pointed to employ
ment numbers for Pickens
County. For him, the key fig
ure is the number of people
“currently employed with
jobs working somewhere.”
Georgia Department of
Labor numbers show that in
March of 2021 in Pickens
County there was a work
force of 15,284 people, with
14,860 of those employed.
That same GDOL March
dataset shows that there were
424 people unemployed in
Pickens County, or 2.8 per
cent. Unemployment claims
from March 2021 are 205 in
Pickens County, down from
219 in February, and down
significantly from 899 in
March of last year.
“If you look at that em
ployment number, at the very
height it was about 15,100
people in Pickens County
who had jobs,” Suttles said.
“So, this past March we’ve
reached within 300 people of
our historical peak of em
ployed people. If you look at
those numbers we’re getting
close to running out of people
to work.”
Suttles said considering
there is such a large retire
ment community here, a
labor force of around 15,000
is a good number (Pickens
has a 2019 estimated popula
tion of 32,591). The majority
of Pickens’ workforce, about
10,000 people, leave the
county to work while be
tween 1,000 to 2,000 travel to
Pickens to work, Suttles said,
“So we’ve got about 5,000
working here a day.”
Getting back to work
In a Mid-may open letter
signed by a slew of state eco
nomic entities, including the
Georgia Chamber of Com
merce, the Georgia Trans
portation Alliance, the
Georgia Farm Bureau, the
Georgia Association of Man
ufacturers and many more,
they implored the state to
take a number of steps to help
improve the labor crisis, in
cluding axing the federal
COVID unemployment.
“Here, over 231,000 Georgians are on un
employment, but over the last 90 days, Geor
gia businesses have reported at least 406,000
job openings,” the letter states. “Getting those
men and women connected to employers and
back to work is the first step...Compared to
previous years for the same time, the current
number of job postings is nearly double,
proving that our conditions are unprece
dented and require creative solutions.”
On May 13, Gov. Kemp and State Labor
Commissioner Mark Butler announced their
economic recovery plan, which included opt
ing out of federal COVID unemployment.
Pickens’ House Rep. Rick Jasperse told
the Progress, “I’m glad the governor moved
to open Georgia up. The next logical step was
to reduce that federal side to help get people
to go back to work.”
The Employee NOW CEO believes that
for people who have been on unemployment
during the pandemic, the gap in employment
could come back to haunt them.
“As these federal benefits end and em
ployers get back in the drivers’ seat, those
people with a one to one-and-a-half year gap
in employment might not get consideration
and might be impacted,” she said. “Employ
ers want to see that you have been working
and contribute.”
During the pandemic her office has been
reporting people who have been offered jobs
but are no-shows to the Department of Labor
because if you were offered a job and you re
fused you are technically not eligible for un
employment. She thinks that once the DOL
gets caught up and has time to review com
plaints like hers there could be repercussions,
and that the DOL could come back to collect
unemployment from people if they did not
qualify.
Dailey, like other employers we inter
viewed, believes discontinuing the federal
COVID unemployment benefits will improve
the job market, but she doesn’t know what
that will look like exactly.
Pickens County Board
of Commissioners
Regular Board Meeting
Thursday, May 20, 2021
6:00 p.m.
1266 E. Church St., Jasper, GA
in the Conference Room, Ste. 168
I. Call to order
II. Prayer
III. Pledge of Allegiance
IV. Amendments to Agenda
V. Employee/Other Recognition
VI. Consent Agenda
VII. Old Business
VIII. New Business
A. UGA Extension Contract/Salary Verification
Form/MOU
B. Alvin Young Property (Land Lot 188-12th District)
IX. Finance Report
A. RFP Process for Future Audits
X. Action Items
A. Approve Minutes
• Regular Meeting - April 15, 2021
• Work Session - May 6, 2021
• Called Meeting - May 6, 2021
B. Roper Park Master Plan - Lose Design Company
C. Rezones:
• RZ-190073 Mark Roland
Jerusalem Church Road, Jasper
HB to RR
Map/ Parcel #032-054-002
40.47 Acres
• RZ-190074-Silena Jumper
199 Tabitha Drive, Jasper
AG to RR
Map/ Parcel # 062B-001-005
7.31 Acres
• RZ-190093-Todd & Kristi Stewart
8440 Hwy 53 West, Jasper
RR to SA
Parcel # 033-070
1-Acres
• RZ-190094-Todd & Kristie Stewart
Hwy 53 West, Jasper
AG to SA
Parcel #033-071-002
4.19-Acres
• RZ-190095-Charles & Kathy Chastain
188 Hwy 136 Connector, Talking Rock
RR to AG
Parcel #018-023-005
3 _ Acr@s
• RZ-190096-Henry & Brigitte Cook
186 Hwy 136 Connector, Talking Rock
RR to AG
Parcel #018-023-003
4.88-Acres
XI. Guests/Comments
XII. Executive Session
XIII. Executive Session Minutes
XIV. Adjourn
In addition to limited socially distance seating at the
meeting, please join the Board of Commissioners meet
ing via Zoom. Details to join the meeting are as follows:
Board of Commissioners - Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/2105979001?pwd=cStJRjRvSIY0eHM
yUVNENVVPdWdDZz09
Meeting ID: 210 597 9001
Passcode: AQD1CW