County creates public safety director role
Daviess Fiscal Court approved the creation of a public safety director position and promoted Daviess County Fire Chief Jeremy Smith to fill the role during its meeting Thursday night at the Daviess County Courthouse.
Daviess Judge-Executive Charlie Castlen said he had for some time been looking to see if there was a way for the county to better provide and address public safety.
'Just over time I've looked at it, and from my perspective, this is an opportunity to try to maximize inter-agency communication and cooperation, to develop and update organizational emergency response protocols, to enhance communication with staff and all of our first-responder agencies that are in Fiscal Court, and just to ensure that Daviess County consistently has the highest quality resources, services for public safety.'
Castlen said the position is not an overlap with the duties of the county's Emergency Management Agency.
'It's not in the same realm,' he said. 'EMA is primarily planning and reacting to an emergency, and I guess at some level, for lesser emergencies, the same would be true for fire departments and police.
'I think that Jeremy's role is going to be more of an oversight. It's connecting the two agencies, and a lot of bigger counties have a public safety director position. It's not unique to us.'
Castlen said public safety is 'absolutely' among his highest priorities.
'I think that's the real reason that we have our government,' he said, 'is to be able to deal with those things that the private sector is really not designed to deal with.'
Castlen said Smith's experience as fire chief, which he became in 2019, made him an excellent choice for the position.
'With Jeremy, with his depth of knowledge and his skill set, he's a good fit for it,' said Castlen, who anticipates there being multiple in-house candidates interested in the fire chief position. 'There is not an obvious pick; we've got three or four fire assistant chiefs. I would think all of them might have some level of interest unless they just decide, 'I don't want to be fire chief.' '
Smith will officially begin his new role Sunday. The annual salary for the position is $120,000, which County Treasurer Jordan Johnson said will be partially funded through attrition.
In another personnel move, Fiscal Court approved reclassifying David Smith as parks director, a position he has held on an interim basis. Smith was previously the county's director of legislative services.
'David has been in that role for five or six months, and I think he's done a good job,' Castlen said. 'He and I have talked about whether or not he wanted to remain in that or whether or not it was something where he would switch back to his old position and we would put it out to the public to be parks director.
'But he indicated an interest in filling that role, and he absolutely has shown he can do the job.'
Castlen said at this time he doesn't anticipate filling the director of legislative services position, since the position had evolved since he took office.
'He will assist as needed, but in his old job he was also over the landfill and the animal control, so David had some people reporting to him,' Castlen said. 'I made the decision that I have department heads report directly to me.
'But one of the things that David has a tremendous skill set on is research, a skill set that is very beneficial. I'll still call on him.'
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