With Commissioners Eddie Wright and Tim Pegram opposed, the Vance County Board of Commissioners voted 5-2 to terminate its relationship with the City of Henderson as of October 1, 2009.
The vote took place during Monday evening’s regular board meeting.
In the same motion, the county will hire its own fire marshall and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Director in a combined position along with part-time clerical help.
Currently, the City of Henderson and Vance County share a Fire Chief/EMS Director in the person of Danny Wilkerson. The contract between the county and the city provides funding from the county to the city for Wilkerson’s administrative services, as Wilkerson remains an employee of the city.
Before the vote was taken, the board listened to comments from the public regarding the issue in a special public comment session of the meeting devoted to fire and EMS matters, especially reaction to a Fire/EMS Study commissioned by Vance County and received by the commissioners during their meeting in May of 2008.
Daren “Squirrel” Small, the chief of the Townsville Volunteer Fire Department as well as the Chief of the Vance County Fire Fighters Association advocated changes to members of the commission for improvement in the county’s Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating.
Citing slower response times because volunteer fire fighters work out of town, Small suggested staffing volunteer fire houses with part-time fire fighters who could transport fire fighting equipment and vehicles to the scenes of fires.
Small said that this change could reduce a twelve minute response time to six minutes. He noted that other counties such as Franklin and Granville were taking this approach.
Small noted that the reduction in the ISO rating would bring industry to the area.
Eddie Wright asked Small what part-time employees would be doing when not going out on a call. He expressed a fear that they would be “sitting around playing cards”. Small responded that part-time employees would be training or engaged in work-related activities in the field.
Townsville resident Ron Jones told members that the county needs its own fire marshall and EMS director. He said that these positions should be staffed by two individuals, as they are two different jobs. He said that a county fire marshall could help check on and assist paid employees.
Jones went on to say that the Golden Belt Fire District should be a volunteer district, as are the other fire districts in the county with the exception of the City of Henderson, which has its own paid department. Jones said that the paid employees should be redistributed through the county.
Jones also spoke in favor of disbursing EMS stations throughout the county instead of a central location at Station 3.
Pegram argued that if the county operates fire departments all over the county that it is not fair to Henderson.
“They had to incorporate to do that,” Pegram said.
Pegram said that maybe some towns need to incorporate themselves.
Jones responded by noting that county residents pay a fire tax that city residents do not pay. Commissioner Danny Wright said that county residents will have to pay increases out of the fire tax, and that that is fair to the city.
Jones told Pegram that “incorporation is not an easy thing these days”.
Chris Wright, the Chief of the Cokesbury Volunteer Fire Department asked the commissioners to move the hire date of a fire marshall/EMS director to July 1, 2009 rather than January 1, 2010.
Commissioner Scott Hughes remarked that when he was elected in 2006 that he brought knowledge to the commission that they didn’t have, chiefly his experience in public safety in EMS and as a deputy sheriff. He remarked that he would like to see volunteer fire departments brought together, and that the county needs its own administration to make the changes.
County Commission Chair Dan Brummitt noted that only one person would be hired for the dual position due to budget constraints.