Jefferson County Health Department assistant director Richard Tufts is retiring, after 18 years and seven months with the agency.
His official retirement date was June 1, but he had vacation time saved up, so his last day on the job was in mid-May.
Tufts, who was taking a motorcycle trip around the county, was not available for comment.
The Health Department Board of Trustees held a special meeting May 28 and eliminated the assistant director job, created two new positions and offered promotions to employees to fill the new jobs.
The board voted unanimously to promote operations manager Steve Sikes to fill one of the new positions – deputy director of agency operations – and administrative services manager Jennifer Pinkley to fill the other one – deputy director of agency administration.
Brianne Zwiener, who also got a promotion during the meeting – to public information officer – said Pinkley and Sikes will share the duties Tufts previously performed.
Zwiener said while the board voted to promote those employees, they must accept the promotions and as of Tuesday, at Leader deadline, they had not.
She said she believed the employees would accept the promotions sometime this week.
Zwiener also said she could not give salary information for those new positions until the employees accepted the promotions.
Health Department Director Kelley Vollmar said she will miss working with Tufts, who had both a medical and law enforcement background.
“He always had such a different view of how to go about doing things,” she said. “It was such a unique perspective that he brought to the table.”
Zwiener said Tufts began working for the agency as a bioterrorism planner and then was the nursing administrator before being promoted to assistant director on June 1, 2016.
Zwiener said Tufts’ job duties included assisting with managing overall day-to-day operations, managing personnel, ensuring the Board of Trustees’ compliance with local health codes and regulations, taking part in multi-faceted community health and environmental projects and more. She said Tufts’ annual salary was $89,172.51.
The Health Department Board of Trustees meetings are livestreamed to the department’s YouTube channel.