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Barrow County has lost 20 firefighters since February, Commissioner Steve Worley said at the Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday night. And not only that, but on average, more than two firefighters are out every day, because of paid time off, Kelly days or medical leave.
So Tuesday, he asked the board to shuffle positions and duties within the fire department to help free up enough money to create three more positions.
"We should have four personnel per station per shift, correct, when all the positions are filled?" he asked Interim Fire Chief John Skinner. "But we would still have, at the average we’re going at now, 2.62 people out per day full-time… because of the circumstances where we’re running into a problem because we can’t get part-time people to come in."
Worley said he’s met with Skinner and Operations Development Manager Bob Hohe to find a way to fill that employment gap within the fire department.
He made a motion to abolish the training officer position and move those job responsibilities to the deputy chief. The deputy chief’s job description will be rewritten and evaluated in six months for salary adjustments. The money freed up by the training officer position will be used to pay three new fire and EMT positions.
Brian Bullock has been the department’s training officer.
"Training is not going to lag," said Bullock outside the meeting. A plan is developed to enhance the department’s instructor base so that when the new training center is constructed in the county, very few classes will need to be taken elsewhere.
The Board of Commissioners unanimously approved Worley’s motion.
"The ball’s in yours and your staff’s court," Worley told Skinner. "Make it work."
Worley also made a motion that would re-establish the fire tax within the county, but he withdrew the motion for a future meeting, once the commissioners will have had a chance to look into it more.The commissioners also raised concerns about an out-of-service ambulance that’s still listed as a back-up vehicle.
Commissioner Eva Elder said the board had voted previously to have the board remove the ambulance from service, because it could be unsafe.
Commissioner Ben Hendrix made a motion to permanently remove the ambulance from the fire department’s service and sell it. The board approved the motion unanimously.
Worley also reminded the audience and county employees that it’s not the board’s job to micromanage each department.
"In the fire department and, as far as I’m concerned in this county, this board and this chairman’s job... is to implement policies and look at them after our budget… It is not our job to micromanage any departments. It’s not the chairman’s job to micromanage the departments. If the department heads can’t handle the job, they should step down," Worley said.
He said the county government faces major problems, including employees who don’t trust the department heads, the board and the chairman.
"I’m finding a problem and I’m going to fix it," said Worley, who added that he’s committing his Friday afternoon’s to the county and employees and department heads can expect to see him in the office every week.
