ASHLAND — Ashland County commissioners have restarted their search for an EMA director and headquarters.
The commissioner’s office posted a job description for the position most recently held by Mark Rafeld, who retired in July after 15 years in the role.
Commissioners hired Lt. Randy Wood, of the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office, in September as interim director with no increase in salary. At the time, commissioners said the EMA department would move operations to the sheriff’s office.
Wood said the added role proved to be too much.
“I was having fun doing it,” he said. “It was just a lot of stuff to do.”
Also, a difference in the way EMA directors are reimbursed for benefits through the state meant the job was too expensive for the county to fund out-of-pocket, he said.
“Because I’m full-time with the county already, I wasn’t eligible for state reimbursement stuff they got with (Mark Rafeld),” Wood said.
One task he’s proud of since being in charge was processing new house numbers that had gone unprocessed since Rafeld’s departure in July.
“When there’s a new build, you have to apply for a house number. That has to be processed in order to get it into our emergency system. That was all put on hold until I took over,” he said.
EMA is currently housed at the former service center along State Route 60, which was bought by the Ashland County-West Holmes Career Center in July.
Until recently, the plan was to move EMA and the county health department to a building the commissioners purchased on Claremont Avenue. However, commissioners said in August the building will now only house the health department.
Ashland County Board of Commissioners President Jim Justice said Thursday the plan is now to move EMA possibly to an office inside the county administrative building on Cottage Street.
He said outgoing Congressman Bob Gibb’s existing office located on the second floor of the county administrative building could be an option.
“We needed to fine-tune what we had,” Justice said of the current situation with Wood. He added that a sheriff deputy’s pay structures are “substantially” different than that of an EMA director’s, making it tough to add the additional role to an already full plate.
Wood, who has worked at the sheriff’s office for 22 years, currently works as the county’s 911 coordinator and also does administrative work with sex offenders through the office. He also leads the office’s drone team during searches and other incidents.
Before appointing Wood, commissioners said they had received “quite a few” applications for the role. Since then, the commissioners re-defined the job description in order to “narrow the field and make it so we get better applicants,” Justice said.
The job description, currently posted to the commissioner’s Facebook page, will also be posted in other job sites, such as Indeed, in the following days, Justice said.
The job’s salary range is between $60,000 and $80,000.
