Potential Changes in Store for County Emergency Services

Newly sworn-in briefed the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday night with proposed changes to the way emergency services work.

Most of the changes involve redistribution of duties among workers, and he also hopes to clean up some job descriptions. In doing so, Merrifield plans to advertise and establish a new, completely open, hiring process and said there are currently five positions open.

“I can assure you that I’ve made it clear to all my staff that nobody has a lock on any jobs,” Merrifield said.

He added, however, that he is “very interested” in hiring from within the department.

“I think we have the talent,” he said. “We just need to redistribute.”

Merrifield also proposed that firefighters and EMT part-time positions be capped at 24. In addition, he hopes to cap the amount of communication officers to five.

He said it’s to maintain a level of service to the community.

Commissioner Ben Hendrix moved to table any action on personnel issues until the county attorneys have reviewed everything.

“Because of the recent riff that we had we eliminated certain management positions and certain supervisors and deputies and all that kind of stuff,” Hendrix said. “I just want to make sure we’re not going to throw ourselves into the weeds.”

Before any of Merrifield’s proposals are approved, they must be brought back to the commission at future meetings.

Special-use permit request denied

The commission voted to deny a special-use permit request from Maria Serban for personal care spaces in her home at 1383 Larose Drive in Auburn.

There are five bedrooms, each with a bathroom, that Serban hoped to lease out to those in need of personal care.

There were several residents present at the meeting in opposition, many of which are neighbors in the subdivision.

Brad Smith lives directly across from the residence and spoke on behalf of many in the audience.

“The residents of this community are opposed,” he said. “This is a single-family residential community. We do not believe that this would be beneficial to our community and this would be detrimental to our community.”

Most of the opposition revolved around an increase in traffic on the small road and the fact that emergency vehicles would have limited access to the house in the event of an emergency.

Some were also concerned that the increase in traffic would be dangerous to the children in the community. There are approximately 10 children in the subdivision, three of which live on the same street as the proposed personal care facility. There are 14 homes and two streets in the small community.

Hendrix again spoke to make a motion, which was denied. His main concerns were that the facility would impede normal development of the neighborhood and that it would take away from the character of the neighborhood.

Other business

Approved at the BOC meeting:

• A rezone to 12.5 acres of property at 440 Wages Road from A-G to C-2 to continue to use the property as a medical billing business
• A rezone to 2.01 acres of property at 1014 Gainesville Highway from C-2 to C-3 to allow for storage of automobile repairs
• A rezone to 14.64 acres of property at 518 Dotson Road from A-G to R-1 to divide the estate