Carbon County officials are back to the drawing board with getting election leadership in place.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners accepted the resignation of Carol Etheridge of Lehighton, the assistant director of elections, effective March 1.

The position of election director is still vacant after Lisa Dart resigned earlier this month and Etheridge chose to decline moving into the director position.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said after the resignation that this leaves the county “scrambling.”

“Scrambling for a replacement and trying to ensure we still have a safe election,” he said, noting that the county will now look at the applicants it received for the positions that hadn’t originally been selected.

“It happened real quick so we don’t have many answers,” Nothstein added. “We have to talk about on how we’re going to proceed about potential candidates and possibly readvertise or possible promotion. It’s really up in the air right now.”

Nothstein stressed the urgency of getting the positions filled.

March 7 is the deadline for candidates to file petitions for the May 16 primary.

When asked about the candidate the commissioners were negotiating with for the director position last week, Nothstein said that the person decided not to take it.

“We are in dire need of help, but we will work on it,” he said. “I’m confident we’ll still have a good, clean election but it’s going to be a struggle.”

Etheridge, when asked why she chose to leave, said that she had no comment on her decision, but spoke about the salary study and specifically Jane Krebs, who has worked in the election department under a total of five directors during her 18 years of service.

“The county has some amazing employees,” Etheridge said. “We’ve heard from employees that they’re not feeling valued, that they are feeling like a number and that the commissioners really aren’t aware of what’s going in to being a county employee. I certainly think in some cases that is absolutely true.

“In my case, I have a fantastic opportunity that speaks to where I would like to go with my career. That being said, I want to be sure that the employees in the election department, Jane Krebs specifically, is appropriately awarded and honored for her work in elections. Jane has done an amazing job for years and we’re really hoping that with this salary study, her position is appropriately updated to reflect the work and the responsibility that she has. Her salary has to be reassessed to be more in line with her responsibilities.”

Krebs received a 4-cent per hour raise based on the new wage scale adopted late last year, while Etheridge received an approximate 10% raise.

This was a reason why Dart also left because the decision to not provide her with a larger increase left her feeling undervalued and unappreciated.