Henderson Daily Dispatch
VANCE COUNTY, N.C. — In a joint meeting Wednesday, members of the Vance County public safety and human relations committees endorsed finalizing the separation of the county’s fire department and emergency medical services.
The committee recommended creating three new EMS division chief positions that would not be shared with the fire department. Under the current staffing structure, three battalion chiefs work for both the fire and EMS departments.
“We asked for a meeting of the two committees because what we are doing and what we want to discuss kind of transcends the responsibility of either one,” said interim County Manager Robert Murphy. “We are talking about the reorganization itself, which is really under the purview of the public safety committee, but that has some personnel ramifications and consequences to it.”
Deputy County Manager Jordan McMillen said the fire and EMS departments were separated in the 2015-16 budget. And in November, the county hired Javier Plummer as the new EMS director and Chris Wright as county fire chief.
The catalyst to split the departments occurred in July 2014 when former fire marshal and EMS director Harold Henrich abruptly resigned from the dual position.
Vance County has combined the departments and the director job since Henrich was hired in October 2009.
“We have, as staff, sat down with Javier and talked through specifics, and he has shared goals and ways to improve the department,” McMillen said. “Just from the outset, we want to make sure everyone is aware of why we are proposing this, and it is so that we can have some of the highest quality emergency medical services, and we want to do it within acceptable response times.”
He said there a total of 28 staff positions in EMS department: a director, three shared leadership positions, and 24 EMTs and paramedics.
“They are divided into three shifts, and each shift has four ambulances, and there are two people on each ambulance,” McMillen said. “The way it is operating now is that there are battalion chiefs and those battalion chiefs are operating on both sides of fire and EMS.”
He said creating the three EMS division chiefs would essentially complete the final separation of the two departments.
“We believe this is in line with what the committee was looking at in terms of the structure,” he said.
The committees also recommended reclassifying three qualified paramedic positions as field training officers who would receive a 2 percent salary supplement.
“There are specific certifications they would have to have to do that,” McMillen said. “They would have to be a certain level paramedic. So that is the second item that we think will really help improve the operations of the EMS department.
Committee members also discussed reorganizing the fire department’s staffing, but no changes were finalized.
Murphy said the committees’ recommendations will go before the full board of commissioners at the next regular meeting, scheduled for Jan. 4, 2016.
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