14 candidates submitted applications to become Habersham County’s new emergency services director, and now, the county can move forward with finding the right fit for the job.
Previous Emergency Services Director Chad Black retired from emergency services earlier this month after over 30 years of service to the county. HCES Chiefs Jeffrey Adams and Jason Davey are currently serving as the interim directors for the department.
“I am very confident in the [application] pool,” said Habersham county Human Resources Director Ann Cain. “We have qualified candidates from within the county and from outside of the county.”
Cain, County Manager Alicia Vaughn and a panel of emergency services professionals will begin to review the applications next. After choosing the candidates they think are best suited, they’ll begin an extensive interviewing phase.
That interviewing phase will include in-depth interviews between county officials and a panel of emergency services professionals, recommended by Black, and those applicants.
“I feel very blessed, I reached out to those people and they have already agreed to do that,” Vaughn told Now Habersham. “That’s huge, because . . . the interview process takes a lot of time. They’re volunteering their time to do that, which I think is very important because it [the position] is so specialized, especially since we provide ambulance service in-house. We want to make sure that we have people on those panels that understand what that takes.”
At this time, there is no estimated date the county will choose a finalist for the position.
“This is an extremely important and vital position for Habersham County,” Habersham County Public Information Officer Carolyn Gibson says. “Therefore, we would appreciate the communities understanding that this is not a process we will rush through.”
