County to revisit emergency coordinator position

At their upcoming regular meeting, the county commissioners will discuss the state-mandated role of emergency management coordinator. Will Cunningham resigned earlier this month but, before advertising for a replacement, the commission will discuss the role with Homeland Security representatives.

“I communicate with the Homeland Security director from Cheyenne pretty often and she has asked to be on our agenda,” says Commissioner Jeanne Whalen.

“It’s going to be interesting. I’ve been involved in this for a long, long time but we’ve never have the state come up and tell us what they do.”

It has proven a challenge to keep the position filled, Whalen says, which is often the case with a part-time role. Whether the county will be able to upgrade it to a full-time position is one of the matters to be discussed.

“We haven’t had a full-time coordinator for a while, that wasn’t an option. Right now is a good time to have the discussion because we’re working on budget and we need to know how much money we have to play with,” she explains.

Because the role is half state and half county, one state grant that the county has been taking advantage of pays for half the coordinator’s salary, up to a certain amount. Perhaps, says Whalen, the Homeland Security director will be able to outline other grants that could supplement this funding.

“She is going to talk about some of the grants we might not be aware of,” she says.

Whalen says that she, personally, would like to see the new emergency management coordinator place attention on these potential available grants.

Once the discussion has been held, “We’re going to advertise it,” Whalen says.

“There are some places that just automatically hire people, but we don’t believe in doing that. Every position in the courthouse that we deal with, we advertise and have an interview process. It takes longer, but it’s a little more open that way.”