The Mower County Board on Tuesday agreed to modify its original plan for its Centralized Finance project.

Under its most idealistic, the concept would have found ways to bring finance operations into one location and implement efficiencies that would provide more “backup” in job duties and more hands available at different times of the year — resulting in increased service to patrons.

However, County Coordinator Craig Oscarson said in a memo the board, “Work locations of the accounting staff, supervision concerns by some departments, workload overload during the tax cycle and lack of progress has caused me to conclude that possibly this project is too much for existing staff and we need to take a step back.”

He said he believed the county should focus on better utilization of staff and more training. The changes would affect seven employees in four departments.

He suggested the following modifications to current procedure:

•Transfer direct supervision of the highway department accountant and the highway bookkeeper/office support position from the finance director to the public works director. Maintain a 50-50 split of work assignments between public works and finance for the bookkeeper/office support staff, effective today.

•Transfer supervision of Health and Human Services’ five accounting staff from the finance director to the human services director, effective today.

•Direct Oscarson to review the office location assignments for the finance department, County Auditor/Treasurer’s staff and the Health and Human Services staff and provide a recommendation to the personnel committee for possible changes based on this review by Dec. 31.

•Modify the proposed 2017 budget for the first two items to reflect changes, effective Jan. 1.

Some employees spoke in favor of the plan and no one spoke against it.

Commissioner Tim Gabrielson summed up the changes, saying Tuesday’s action wasn’t taking a step back, “a stepping stone to get to where we want to be.”