By Camas Frank ~

After five months without a permanent head of veteran’s services San Luis Obispo County administrators have sent the Board of Supervisors a contract to hire Christopher Lopez for the post.

Most recently serving as an accredited veterans representative with Monterey County, Lopez is slated to take on the fulltime job of VSO from interim director of the Department of Veteran’s Services, and Navy reservist, Cmdr. Paul Porter.

Before starting a career in veteran’s affairs Lopez served in the U.S. Army, and was then the Santa Cruz County VSO.

Those were posts that the interview team found impressive as qualifications said Cmdr. Porter, who was involved in the search process.

“He’s very qualified, very energetic. The fact that he’s already had experience with State and County operations,” said Cmdr. Porter,  “is a big plus. He’ll be able to step right in, to hit the ground running.”

While the interim director is looking forward to going back to his other fulltime job as a manager in SLO County’s Information Technology Department, he’ll still be splitting responsibilities for another week or so as the planned hand off takes place.

Lopez will need to be brought up to speed on the programs Veteran’s Services is currently running. Aside from managing the annual budget of $500,000 to assist local vets to obtain their earned benefits and other services available, the job entails collaborating with other agencies to provide a Veterans Treatment Court. Monterey County instituted a similar program, which provides alternatives to incarceration to qualifying candidates,  at the end of last year.

The contract sent to the Board of Supervisors for approval Feb. 23, places Lopez on level 2 of the pay scale for the position. The job is worth $72,259-$87,838 annually. Lopez would earn $6,323 a month or $75,876 a year.