The Grundy County Board approved a request from the tax assessor’s office Tuesday that will provide it with two new positions, a field appraiser coordinator and a property tax coordinator.

County Administrator Mary Kucharz said the consultant who came in to work with the staff, Stephanie Kennedy, and the deputy assessor came up with these positions in an effort to streamline and unify the department with the township assessors.

“There’s two areas, and they do a little bit of different work,” Kucharz said. “Field appraisers are out in the field doing appraisals, and then bring that data back into the assessor’s office and work on it. The property tax coordinators are working on exemptions and splits and things that go on that take place within the assessor’s office.”

Kucharz said the two new positions take over each department.

The pay range for both positions would be between $50,000-$60,000 salary.

“They were not put in the budget,” Kucharz said. “They would be brand new, but because of the makeup of the current assessor’s office, which is definitely lacking a supervisor of assessment and lacking staffing, what I call the field appraiser and the assessment tax, we are able to fund these two positions this year, and that will get us into next year’s budget.”

Kucharz said these positions are not just managers or supervisors; they are working positions.

Board President Drew Muffler said these recommendations are the first from Kennedy. He said she took a fine-toothed comb to the office.

“As she went through the assessor’s office and started digging and trying to figure out how things work down there, she started to identify things that were going to help set a new baseline to make us successful moving forward,” Muffler said.

Muffler said there are currently five employees working in the office, and Kennedy would like to see the staff balloon to 10.