Taxpayer's Watchdog
Group, Inc.
April 19, 2005
Where were you last night? The crowd
was slack with only 7 people in attendance at the BOC meeting, 9
including the newspaper editor and Ed Westbrook, who was on the
agenda. There are reasons that people should attend these
meetings, and last night’s happenings revealed below will show you
why YOU need to attend.
Two resolutions were brought in front
of the Commissioners. One
was the 911 Resolution.
This resolution takes
the 911 Authority board from 11 members to 7 members. 100% of the
funding of 911 is done by the County. All expenditures are shown
in the County budget. Monticello and Shady Dale have been
appointing members, but this will remove their ability to do so.
The vote was 3 in favor (Bernard, Johnson, Yarbrough) and 2
against (Hill and Pennamon). This resolution won’t take effect
until Monticello and Shady Dale sign off on it.
The
second resolution called
the EMS Resolution would bring EMS and Fire services
together. This agenda
item took at least 40 minutes if not longer. This is another
“brain storm” of Ed Westbrook. He said the response time would be
helped because it takes volunteer firefighters too long to
respond. EMS personnel are at Station 1 and Station 3 (Jackson
Lake Rd. and Hwy 212) and get to the scene 3-10 minutes faster
than the fire truck. He said the issue is equipment not manpower.
However, we hear that many of the volunteer fire fighters have
quit because of problems, and many feel that Ed is intent on
pushing them out so he can HIRE fire fighters that he can
control. Some stations have as few as 2 volunteers now.
According to Ed Westbrook, the EMS has no responsibility for
fighting fires. They go to the scene and sit in case they are
needed.
Comm. Pennamon asked Ed, “How many
hours in a day, Ed? How can you do all this?” Ed said, “How am I
doing it all now?” In the opinion of many, Ed has too much to
do. Pennamon said, “You always ask for more personnel. With this
plan you go into a paid Fire Dept very quickly. Watch and see how
much this will cost the county.” The TWG has talked to several of
the volunteer Fire departments and have found the PAID
firefighters are not doing what they were hired to do—maintain the
equipment, keep the grass mowed at the stations, and pressure
check the fire hydrants. This is not being done. Who’s supposed
to be supervising these guys? Ed Westbrook. Yet he requested
another paid fire fighter last night to help “test flow” the fire
hydrants. He had already said all this wouldn’t cost the county
any more money. He has said this over and over again in the past,
but every time he wants to add to his growing empire, he usually
has an ad in the paper for another position within 3 months of
telling the BOC “he can handle it.”
Mary Patrick requested that the
Commissioners table all this and let the public give input. The
public has not been made aware of all this and we wonder how many
of the VFD’s knew “the whole story.” The public should be able to
review the Resolution and give their comments to the
commissioners. Commissioner Yarbrough pushed this issue and made
the motion to accept the resolution. Commissioner Bernard 2nd.
Johnson and Bernard said at least 2 times each that they need to
understand better, they need more information. Commissioner
Pennamon had very good concerns and asked very good questions. He
doesn’t see a plan in place. He thinks they need to wait 30
days. Westbrook said he would come back with an operational plan
within 6-8 weeks. Yarbrough wants to also set up a committee to
work up the Standard Operating Procedures. Johnson did say, “We’ve
heard all the good things. What’s the bad side to this?”
Westbrook said he felt it was “that EMS was paid and Firemen were
volunteer and they’d have to work together. That might be a
problem.” The BOC then voted 3 for 2 against to accept the
Resolution (Hill and Pennamon against)
Discussion about forming a committee
then followed. Who do they want on the Committee to oversee this
transition? Yarbrough, Westbrook, Fontaine, 2 firemen, and 2
EMS. NO public input. No “public” person for any of the fire
districts. The people pay for it but have no input. Why? Why
shouldn’t others be on the committee? Because Yarbrough and
Fontaine said (in essence) that the more people you have, the
longer it takes to get it done. Westbrook said he wants Fire/EMS
from Station 1 and Station 3 to participate because these are the
stations involved. Comm. Pennamon says, “What about input from
other stations? What about Piedmont, Shady Dale, Farrar, and
Hillsboro? Don’t they count?” We also question the EMS being on
the committee. Will they really have a say-so? If they don’t
agree with Westbrook, will their job be in jeopardy?
Finally the vote was 3 (Johnson,
Hill, Bernard) to table appointments to the committee. Other 2
against. Comm. Pennamon made comments that he’s against the whole
thing.
TWG Comments
We’ve never been to a meeting that
Westbrook didn’t present something that didn’t take at least 30-40
minutes. All this wouldn’t have taken so long if public had known
about it and people had been able to submit comments, concerns,
and suggestions to the BOC. People are not stupid and have good
ideas, but instead the BOC went ahead and voted. We feel
Yarbrough shouldn’t even be voting; he has conflict since his wife
works for EMS and Westbrook is her boss. We agree with Comm.
Pennamon and his comments on this issue.
Another problem is that the citizens
didn’t know that Westbrook was asking for more personnel. Is this
something that should be handled in Executive Session? The fact
that someone is going to be hired isn’t something that should be
held from the public. People should know about these kinds of
things ahead of time. WE have to pay for it and should know about
it! The discussion of whom to hire and for how much to pay can be
in Executive Session, but the fact that another employee is being
hired and in which dep’t shouldn’t be hidden from view.
One last thought, how many people are
now on the payroll for Emergency Management, FIRE, EMS and 911??
All under Westbrook’s umbrella. How many were there 3 years ago?
Westbrook is trying to bring about full time firemen in the
County. He always uses the “buzz word” of the ISO rating going
down. It hasn’t happened yet. We were told that when we passed
$1.2 million SPLOST for Fire in 1999 that it would go down. We’re
still waiting. Ronnie Payne spoke to the TWG several months ago.
He said the only way the ISO rating will go down is to get a
certain amount of water to a certain location within a certain
amount of time. Our county is too big and too rural for that to
happen any time soon. Hiring full time fire fighters will not make
it happen. What will happen is your taxes will go up
significantly if we hire at least 2 people to work 24-7 at
each of the 7 fire stations. You figure it up. You can contact
your commissioner
or all the commissioners and express
your views.
Carl Pennamon 706-468-8739
or 706-476-3737
cpennamon@yahoo.com
Jack Bernard
706-468-5101
Bernard_jack@hotmail.com
Greg Johnson
706-468-5361
johnson643@aol.com
Bob Yarbrough
678-625-1195
byarbrough5dist@aol.com
TWG
