ELKINS — The Randolph County Commission unanimously approved Thursday to pay stipends to seven county employees for extra work they did during the administration of the county fire fee.

Commissioners approved $8,000 in stipends to go to five employees in the Sheriff’s Office, one employee in the assessor’s office and one employee in the county commission office for “performing over and above regular duties relative to the administration of the fire fee.”

The money will be split between the three departments with $2,000 each going to the assessor’s office and county commission office and $4,000 going to the sheriff’s office.

“As many of you know, back in January the county commission implemented the Randolph County fire free which took a great deal of work and a great deal of effort on the parts of several individuals. Some of those had performed their duties over and above their normal county duties such as the assessor, the sheriff’s office and in the county commission office,” Mike Taylor, Randolph County Commission president, said.

“We were just simply inundated with the number of people that came in with questions, concerns, comments and so forth,” he continued. “So, it is the suggestion of the Randolph County Commission that those people that dealt directly with the folks be compensated in the amount of $2,000 as a pay stipend. The sheriff had worked that down to be split up between five individuals in his office, the assessor broke that down for one person in her office and the county commission had it broken down for one person in our office.”

The $8,000 in funds will be taken from the county fire fee administrative cost budget line.

Commission Chris See said the hard work by the three departments alleviated the need for a fire fee administrator and saved money for the county fire stations.

“A lot of that was back when they were getting fire fees ready to go,” See said. “Instead of hiring an administrator everybody thought each office would take a little more burden on themselves and get a stipend instead of hiring an administrator for the fire fee which saved the firemen quite a bit of money.”

Commissioner Mark Scott said these employees made a “burdensome and time-consuming” undertaking run more smoothly.

“It was a significant savings. I want to publicly thank everyone that was involved in the process,” Scott said. “Any time you roll something new out like this, it is burdensome and time consuming for those involved so we wanted to show a thank you to each of them for taking so much of their time to administer the program so I want to thank each one who took the time to do this.”

In other business:

∫ Following a roughly 20-minute executive session, commissioners unanimously voted to table a request from Randolph County Commission Administrative Assistant Donna Haddix to be placed on paid administrative leave of absence.

• Commissioners unanimously approved signing a letter of support for Historic Beverly Preservation for a grant application.

• Commissioners unanimously approved extending a consulting contract with certified public accountant Lisa Daniels-Smith for accounting services for three additional months, barring her rate of $50 per hour does not change.