Mackinac County Road Commission Reviews Road Progress Through Fall
By Amy Polk

Former Mackinac County Road Commission Engineer/Manager Craig Kelso verbally accepted an offer to leave his position early at the Tuesday, October 30, road commission meeting. Mr. Kelso will be paid $34,000 as part of the mutual severance agreement he and the road commission settled on.

New Engineer/Manager Karrie Abbitt has been empowered by commissioners to execute the agreement on the road commission's behalf, but Mr. Kelso has not yet signed the agreement because he is on vacation.

The action relieves Mr. Kelso of a contractual obligation to remain through the first week of January. The offer was made because Mr. Kelso's early exit can save the road commission thousands of dollars in salary, benefits, and from paying the total compensation for unused vacation and sick time. The road commission has had two engineer/ managers on the payroll for a month since hiring Mrs. Abbitt to replace Mr. Kelso. Mr. Kelso was offered the position of engineer/ manager of Schoolcraft County Road Commission June 27, and he resigned from the Mackinac County Road Commission July 10.

Mrs. Abbitt started work October 1 and is receiving a beginning annual salary of $72,000, health insurance, and use of a vehicle, set at the September 11 road commission meeting. The benefits of the position have been changed, reducing annual vacation hours from 180 to 120. The engineer/ manager will no longer be allowed to accumulate vacation hours and sick time, and must instead use them by the end of the year. The road commission will no longer compensate the engineer/ manager for unused vacation. Longevity pay has been eliminated. Mackinac County Road Commissioner will no longer provide a retirement pension through Municipal Employees Retirement System, and will instead contribute to a 401K retirement plan.

Mr. Kelso was being paid $88,369 through the end of 2007, and would have received $14,728 in salary for the remaining two months, plus additional salary for the first week of January 2008, when his salary would have increased. Mackinac County Road Commission also would have continued paying for benefits, including health, dental, and life insurance, unused vacation and sick leave, longevity pay, and business and personal vehicle use.

If Mr. Kelso signs the new severance agreement, the road commission will not be required to compensate Mr. Kelso for the entire amount of unused sick and vacation time. As of July 2007, Mr. Kelso had accumulated 628 unused hours of vacation time and 797 unused hours of sick time over his eight years of employment. Mackinac County Road Commission would have paid up to 240 hours of accumulated vacation time at the employee's current hourly rate of pay. Anything beyond 240 hours would be compensated at half the hourly rate of pay.

While negotiating Mr. Kelso's severance offer, road commissioners had also questioned whether Mr. Kelso's resignation qualifies as a retirement, since he will be moving on to another job. Commissioners are still waiting for a legal opinion from the road commission's attorney, Michael Hackett of the firm Lynch, Gallagher, Lynch, Martineau, and Hackett of Mount Pleasant.