Graver to appoint Sullivan as Civil Service Officer

     Per a recommendation from Jones County Sheriff Greg Graver, the Jones County Supervisors approved appointing retired Sheriff’s Deputy CJ Sullivan as a Civil Service Officer with the Sheriff’s Office.

     This position is spelled out in Iowa Code, and Graver said it’s been something he’s wanted to do for several years now.

     “I’m ready to pull the trigger on this,” he told the board.

     This position allows a civilian to serve civil papers on behalf of the county sheriff. Graver said in a typical year, his office serves between 1,300 and 2,000 papers for civil matters.

     “We make anywhere from one to 10 attempts to serve for a variety of reasons,” he said.

     When COVID hit, civil service matters were put on hold.

     “Everything shut down,” Graver said of the court system. “Very few papers were being served.”

     With this role on hold due to the pandemic, Graver said his department has been inundated with not only trying to catch up, but stay on top of serving civil papers once again.

     A sheriff’s deputy was handling the work, but that meant the county was paying a deputy full-time pay to do so.

     “Now we’re running bare bones,” he said of being down deputies. “And with the (federal government) lifting the eviction moratorium, we’ll see a backlog the next month to a year. We need to get the process started.”

     Deputies are paid $29.81 an hour. The civil service officer would receive $19.46 an hour for five hours of service a week. Graver said he’d like to start the position at five hours and see whether it needs to increase from there.

     “This is the same wage our transport and court security receive,” he said. “I figure it’ll take $5,500 to $6,000 to fund the position, and we’ll reassess at the end of the fiscal year to see how it’s working.”

     Sullivan currently offers his services for transport and court security. Graver said this new position would fall under his budget so he’s able to track the hours and wage.

     “It’ll be a separate department within my budget,” he offered.

     Graver said despite a crazy year budget-wise thanks to the pandemic, it does allow him to financially cover the civil position.

     “COVID was very good to my budget,” he said. “But we’re down a deputy and two jailers, and have no applications. And I still have an open civil assistant position.”

     “We need this position to ease the burden on patrol staff,” said Graver. “It’ll be a huge help for us moving forward, and CJ is on board with doing this.”

     The board asked Graver if this was a position (job) that needed to be advertised for applications. Graver said, per state law, he’s allowed to appoint and swear in someone to serve in this role.

     “It’s my preferred choice because we have someone with civil experience,” he said of Sullivan. “It’ll be a good thing.”