It is not always easy to consolidate county and school functions and their personnel, Gloucester County finance director Nickie Champion said during a meeting Friday.

Speaking to the Middle Peninsula League of Voters at First Presbyterian Church, Champion said that there are differences in hours that school employees work compared to those of county government workers here. In addition, she said the pay scales are different.

She said that a consolidation was tried of all human resources functions of county and schools a few years back and "it didn’t work," partly because the county workers in the office were on 40-hour weeks and the school personnel were budgeted for 37½-hour weeks.

More recently, Champion said there’s been discussion of consolidating buildings and grounds functions of Gloucester government and the schools. One factor making it a bit harder to implement such a concept is that "county pay is not as rich as the schools," she...