Catoosa County is advertising for a full-time fire chief but county officials say that doesn’t mean they’ll actually hire someone for the job.

The advertisement comes amid talks of consolidating Catoosa Fire & Rescue with Post Volunteer Fire & Rescue.

Both organizations have their own part-time chiefs, and their boards have the authority to accept or decline consolidation. Neither has done that.

The Catoosa County Board of Commissioners held a work session in Fort Oglethorpe at Station 1 Thursday evening to publicly continue talks. About 50 people, most of whom were firefighters, attended the meeting. It was the second of its kind commissioners have held to get input from firefighters and the community on the potential consolidation. The first was last week in Ringgold.

Bruce Ballew, the part-time chief for both Fort Oglethorpe’s paid fire department and the Post’s volunteer one, said newspaper interviews with county officials indicated the county planned to wait to advertise for a chief until all parties met together in a committee and decided on a course of action. No committee has been formed.

“It was printed that you’re not going to do that and then hours before we’re meeting it goes up on the website,” Ballew said at the Thursday meeting.

He said more people would have attended the work session had they known the job ad had been posted.

County Manager Ron Brown said he gave the job advertisement to human resources personnel Thursday morning, and it was posted almost immediately at catoosa.com, the county's official website. Advertising in advance will keep the county from getting behind in the game if everyone decides to go ahead and consolidate, he said.

Robbie Tester, the vice chairman of the Post’s board of directors, said the job ad should be taken down, but county officials said they’ll keep it online.

Marlin Thompson, chairman of the board of directors for Post Volunteer Fire Department, said he is not opposed to consolidation so much as the way county leaders have gone about it.

“I am 110 percent for consolidation,” he said. “It makes good economic sense, good business sense, but you don’t do it overnight…There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything.”

Fort Oglethorpe has extended an offer to consolidate its paid fire department of seven people, some full-time and some part-time, with the Post, which is all volunteer.

Post leaders haven’t accepted or refused it. For years, the Post and Fort Oglethorpe have essentially acted as one fire department when responding to calls.

The Post owns most of the equipment but the city has funded much of the Post’s expenses. The county also provides funding since the Post covers about half of Catoosa’s population.

Fort Oglethorpe City Manager Ron Goulart and council members Jane Moye, Louis Hamm and Harold Silcox all attended the meeting.

Moye said Fort Oglethorpe citizens have footed the bill for years for much of the fire expense in the unincorporated portion of the county.

“The one year the city comes back and asks for just a little bit, you go and do this,” she said to commissioners.
Fort Oglethorpe has asked for an additional $145,000 on top of the $175,000 it received last year. The Post asked for another $492,000 in addition to the $216,000 it received.

Moye also said County Commissioner Ken Marks, whose district includes Fort Oglethorpe, hasn’t supported the fire department or attended meetings. Her remarks drew applause from the audience.

Marks, who later received light applause, said he has long been a supporter of Fort Oglethorpe and Post fire departments. He said he has supported funding for the departments and is open to meeting with anyone. The area would have had to have full fire protection years ago if not for the volunteer support, he said.

“We make mistakes,” he said. “Maybe we handled this the wrong way, but there will be a committee.”

He also suggested levying a fire safety fee of about $40, which he said residents would be more agreeable to than a property tax increase of five or six mills. Others at the meeting said consolidation doesn’t have to mean a full-time fire chief over both departments. One suggestion has been to have a fire commissioner and keep the current chiefs at each department.

The next step in the effort to consolidate will be a meeting of all parties involved, Commission Chairman Bill Clark said. He said it will include representatives from Ringgold and Fort Oglethorpe’s governments, both fire chiefs, someone from the board of directors in both fire departments and county officials.

“And we’re going to just sit down and talk and see where we’re at,” Clark said.

Thompson said the move has been a long time coming. County officials first announced their intentions to consolidate the Post with Catoosa Fire & Rescue in late June.

On the web

Visit catoosa.com to read the ad for full-time fire chief