The Rappahannock County Public Safety Committee last week recommended that the Board of Supervisors withdraw financial support from the troubled Flint Hill Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company.
The vote last week was the latest and most drastic step in the county’s prolonged efforts to address concerns about the company’s ability to meet the terms of its service agreement with the county. Flint Hill receives quarterly payments of about $25,000 from the county to cover operational costs.
But the company’s rescue squad has not been able to respond to calls since last March when its certification with the Virginia Department of Emergency Services was not renewed.
And, in November, its fire department was placed on dual dispatch, meaning another volunteer fire company is simultaneously dispatched to calls in the Flint Hill region. This, according to Emergency Services Coordinator Sean Polster, was due to “poor response performance and inability to respond on fire and rescue incidents.”
Several members of the committee expressed regret about the decision, but also frustration at what they saw as the inability of the fire and rescue company to set a clear path for resolving the problems and administrative failings that have plagued it for almost a decade.
“It’s like we’re beating a dead horse in the head,” said Rappahannock County Sheriff Connie Compton. “We have been dealing with this for probably eight, nine years now, and it’s always the same thing. This board needs to make a decision on whether we’re going to make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors or we’re going to be talking about this for another five years.”
Polster acknowledged that he struggled with recommending a funding freeze. But he, like Compton, indicated that the committee’s patience had run thin. “We keep rehashing this,” he said. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And we’re getting the same result every time. I don’t know that there’s leadership in place to make the changes needed.”
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A tarnished record
Before the vote, Polster read a seven-page document that, in part, detailed the 68-year-old company’s much-tarnished record in recent years. That history includes a consulting firm’s 2015 warning that the fire and rescue squad was in “desperate shape” due to a “significant lack of personnel.” Multiple audits found a “deficiency in internal control” and a 2020 letter from the Rappahannock County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association concluded that the Flint Hill company “appears to lack standards of behavior and operations” and has demonstrated “failure to enforce their existing standards.” The document also noted low response rates by the company’s volunteers and a series of incidents reflecting policy violations and questionable decision making.
It did not, however, reference an ongoing Virginia State Police investigation into complaints made against the fire and rescue company. In a recent letter to Polster, the special agent in charge of the probe cited “sloppy” record-keeping and “non-approved expenditures,” but added that “bad business, bad internal controls do not necessarily make a criminal case.” That investigation isn’t expected to be completed until March, according to the agent.
At last week’s meeting, members of the Public Safety Committee were presented with another letter, this one from Flint Hill Volunteer Fire and Rescue Chief Mike Williams. It was both an apology for past “poor judgment” and a defense that some of the mistakes were made by members no longer in the company. Williams also acknowledged a need for more training, particularly in administration.
“Do I need to be a stronger leader and not try to be everybody’s friend? Absolutely!” he wrote. “I can only promise that I will do what I need to do to make us shine again.”
He also proposed that the Flint Hill company enter into a two-year program in which it would operate its emergency services under the county’s license, and have county officials oversee administrative tasks. That’s an option offered by the county earlier in the year that Flint Hill’s officers didn’t accept, at least in part over concerns of a county takeover of their company.
“We’re here at your mercy,” said Flint Hill company member Norma Settle, who read Williams’ letter to the committee. “We owe it to the people of Flint HIll.”
Leadership questions
It was a strikingly different message from the company than the one delivered to the Public Safety Committee just weeks earlier. Then, Williams had intimated that Polster and County Administrator Garrey Curry had influenced the decision by Dr. Michael Jenks, the company’s medical director, to not approve Flint Hill’s license recertification – a notion both committee members denied.
Polster went on to quote from a letter Jenks had sent to the Flint Hill chief last March. “I absolutely will not allow Flint Hill to resume operations under my direction until I am confident that those operations will be in accordance with all regulations, and patient care will consistently be high quality,” Jenks wrote.
Also, at the Dec. 14 meeting, Karen Williams, the Flint Hill company’s president, criticized Wakefield Supervisor and Chair Debbie Donehey, also a member of the Public Safety Committee, contending she had not been supportive enough.
Donehey responded: “I spent two months helping with an audit of your books. I don’t appreciate being cited as someone who hasn’t been trying to help you. I have met with you and come to your meetings and come to association meetings. So please don’t tell the public that I don’t support you.”
Despite the more conciliatory tone at the more recent meeting, members of the Public Safety Committee apparently were not convinced that the fire and rescue company is ready or able to do what’s necessary to become fully operational again. Curry noted that it still has the option of partnering with one of the other volunteer fire and rescue companies in the county. But both he and Donehey questioned whether Flint Hill has strong enough leadership to regain its footing on its own.
“I just don’t know that I have the faith that there’s the culture in place to foster the environment to grow forward,” said Curry. “And that is totally opposed to my top goal of making the volunteer companies successful.”
In other business, the committee voted to extend by three months a pilot program in which a paid paramedic is stationed at the Sperryville Volunteer Rescue station two days a week. But it left up to the Board of Supervisors the decision on whether that arrangement can be expanded to three days a week, and how the cost would be covered. The Sperryville company has proposed that the county pay 80% of the cost while it would cover the other 20%. Currently, Sperryville is paying the full cost.
The shaping of a hybrid volunteer/paid emergency services system figures to be one of the larger challenges facing the county this year. To that end, the committee also voted to seek a $25,000 grant from the PATH Foundation to help cover the cost of hiring a management consulting firm The Clearing. It would oversee the development of a strategic plan for effectively blending career paramedics with the volunteer companies.
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