Tim Walker
Allegheny Mountain Radio
At the December 6 Pocahontas County Commission meeting, Commissioner John Rebinski addressed the increasing threats to the safety of county residents due to the decreasing number of fire and EMS volunteers.
“We can’t guarantee we are going to be able to provide 24/7 service,” Rebinski said. “We’ve all been working together to cover areas between all the agencies. We’ve even blended together to cover calls. But, we’ve just got to face the fact – each year that goes by, we just keep losing more and more people. People just don’t volunteer like they used to. Sadly enough, this is the consequence.”
Rebinski said that the departments in the northern part of the county are just weeks away from no longer being able to respond to all emergency medical or fire calls because of the lack of volunteers.
Herb Barlow from Marlinton Fire and EMS said his department is literally only hours or days away from that same thing. He said they haven’t even been able to replace one of their two paid responders who left for other employment. He said Pocahontas Memorial Hospital’s EMS, which is staffed by paid responders, helps when it can, but they are often tied up doing patient transfers for the hospital.
Rebinski said there is an urgent need to establish county-paid first responders throughout the county, which will cost lots of money. He suggested cutting off Hotel/Motel money from non-essential organizations, and only funding those required to be funded by state law and Fire/EMS. Rebinski recognized that this will anger many organizations that will lose money if that happens, but that is a better option than having people die because there is no EMS or fire personnel responding to their 911 calls.
Barlow suggested that any fire/EMS responders hired should be paid a living wage of at least $25 per hour plus full benefits. He also suggested a $100 emergency services tax be paid by all residents to help cover the cost.
The commission decided to ask all the organizations that could lose their Hotel/Motel tax to attend the December 20 commission meeting to discuss this with them.
The commission received a letter from Governor Jim Justice advising them that the county’s application for funding through the FY2021 Community Development Block Grant has been approved for $2 million. This will be used for the Pocahontas PSD’s Thornwood Waterline extension to provide water to customers east of Bartow in the Thornwood area.
In other business, the commission:
• approved the hiring of Aaron Jackson as a full-time 911 dispatcher, effective December 15.
• approved Amanda Smarr’s request to draw $45,560.94 from the ARC Broadband Project. Smarr also announced that their grant request to receive $245,000 to demolish the old Board of Education building has been approved.
• voted to support PMH’s ARC Grant application for $2 million for Phase 2 of the hospital’s expansion program.
• received annual updates from Cree Lahti for the Libraries and Visitors Centers; Brenda Marvin for the Pocahontas County Artisan’s Co-op; and Cynthia Gurreri and Peggy Owens for the Pocahontas County Arts Council.
• heard concerns from Russell Holt regarding water line expansion to the CDC’s mine safety center.
• discussed power issues affecting the southern end of the county. Mon Power has requested that specific problem areas be identified for them.
• agreed to invite David Cain to the next meeting to discuss his continued maintenance of the county-owned lots in East Cass, despite being asked to stop maintaining them.
