County to accept EMA applications|[9/19/06]

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Following weeks of wrangling over the position, Warren County supervisors voted Monday to take applications for a new full-time emergency management director.

The post had been filled on an interim basis since May by E-911 Dispatch Center director Geoffrey Greetham, selected by supervisors after a vote to oust L.W. &#8220Bump” Callaway, who had served as the agency’s director for six years.

District 5 Supervisor Richard George, an opponent of replacing Callaway and a proponent of having a full-time director, moved that the job be advertised as a full-time position.

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Responding to District 3 Supervisor Charles Selmon, who said the position has not been full-time because the department has also handled building permits, George said the county would &#8220set its course” by advertising it as full time.

The vote came down 4-1, with District 4 Supervisor Carl Flanders dissenting. After the meeting, Flanders, who engineered the drive to replace Callaway, saw the vote as one of no-confidence toward Greetham, despite assurances from him that he is still a likely applicant for the job.

Greetham &#8220has done a fine job,” Flanders said, adding later that the board &#8220has no reason to relieve him of his duties.”

Several applicants are expected, with experience a likely prerequisite. If chosen for the position fulltime, Greetham will step down as E-911 director and ostensibly be named to the E-911 Commission. That board has operated as a six-member panel since May because as dispatch director, Greetham cannot be a voting member of a commission of which he is also an employee.

&#8220They don’t want it dual-hatted anymore,” Greetham said later.

The emergency management director’s position paid $45,964 before Greetham’s appointment. Since May, his compensation has been the $45,000 he has made as director of the emergency dispatch operation.

Present at Monday’s meeting, Greetham said he gave supervisors a rundown of the agency’s upcoming deadlines and what his assessment of the office’s needs are. The details were shared in closed session, called at the behest of Selmon who termed it a personnel matter, one of the Mississippi Open Meetings Act’s provisions for closing a public meeting.

Flanders was the only supervisor who voted against closing the meeting room door to Greetham’s update.

&#8220The public needs to know what our rationale is in relation to emergency management in the county,” he said.