NORWICH – The Chenango County probation department announced Wednesday that it would be going through many changes in its staff over the next few weeks as its probation director, Laureen Clark, and the probation supervisor will be retiring.

Clark has expressed the urgency of getting the positions re-filled as quickly as possible as the current probation supervisor will be leaving at the end of next week. Clarke said they would need to have the position filled no later than Sept. 2.

County Supervisor Jack Cook, R-Greene, expressed concern that this would create a vacuum in leadership within the probation department and asked if the positions would be able to be filled in time.

“There are other members of the department that are ready to move up to these positions,” said Clarke.

She went on to explain that the current senior probation officer will be promoted to the supervisor position and one of the probation officers would then be promoted to senior probation officer. This would leave only one probation officer position to be filled.

However, Clarke did express concern about the timeliness of the moves and asked that the Safety and Rules committee make a recommendation to the Personnel committee to waive some of the rules that would delay the process of the promotions so the department could focus on replacing the probation officer position that would be left vacant. She stated that since the circumstances were so unique it had left them with very little time to resolve the issue.