WARREN — County officials said they’re committed to strengthening staffing at the Trumbull County 911 Center after another employee’s resignation was accepted this week.

Tacy Bond, center director, spoke to county commissioners at their meeting Wednesday about the nationwide drop off in staffing that’s also being felt locally.

“The lack of staffing that we’re facing right now is a nationwide problem,” Bond said. “It’s not an excuse, but what that does is lead to short tempers and behaviors, and overworked irritation. At the end of the day, we’re trying our best to recruit people.”

Her comments followed a discussion opened by Commissioner Niki Fenchko, who suggested a toxic work environment has led to numerous resignations in recent years.

“What happens is when you have employees who don’t get disciplined, we end up with hostile environments,” Frenchko said.

The latest employee to resign, Kayla Reuff, will be followed by another employee’s resignation at the next meeting.

Frenchko doubled down on her previous comment saying, “People need boundaries in the workplace and in society in order to know what’s acceptable conduct.”

“I’ve seen it here, in the commissioners office,” Frenchko said. “We’ve seen it over in other departments, where there’s favoritism that’s played, depending on who you are, who got you your job. If you’re not connected and you’re a person who organically got hired, you end up not having anyone fighting for you and it’s not right. We’re losing good employees because they’re not connected.”

Commissioner Denny Malloy responded, “If you had looked into this, I was there for four-and-a-half hours on Friday dealing with this, talking to the employees personally. Where were you? And you’re going to cast judgment on this when you never looked into it. Get off your soapbox.”

Bond told commissioners, “We made several attempts to try to keep Mrs. Reuff as an employee.”

“Sometimes there are environments in which people don’t have to like everybody you work with,” Bond said. “But you do have to be an adult, act respectful and get along.”

Bond confirmed that supervision at the center is lacking, and steps are being taken to try to hold employees accountable.

Bond said the supervisor resigning next week wrote in her resignation letter she had “much of the same concerns about how things are running.”

Frenchko suggested that using human resources practices like evaluations, quality assurance and performance audits could help counter some of the center’s problems with employee well-being.

“Several people might be having a hard time with one person,” Frenchko said. “And you might be able to then further do some training, or address the issues. And to say that people aren’t writing the complaints formally, even a verbal complaint. And it sounds like this lady has brought this up verbally on numerous occasions.”

Bond told Frenchko that management offers mediation, along with several different options, to “sit down” with the parties involved, and is instituting evaluations.

“When you’ve had people in positions for multitudes of years, it’s going to take time to change behavior and hold people accountable for things that are happening,” Bond said.

Malloy later said, “You can’t discipline 15 people when they’re doing the work of 25, and they’re all overworked.”

Malloy said the county needs to hire at least 10 people at the center within the next year.

“Enough is enough, we can’t lose anymore,” he said.

Have an interesting story? Contact Daniel Newman by email at dnewman@tribtoday.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @TribDNewman.