Blaine County Emergency Communications Director Bob Greenlaw will leave his job by early January. Greenlaw, who has been instrumental to the process of consolidating emergency dispatch services into one center run by the county, told county officials last week that he has accepted a job with the Ada County Sheriff's Department.
However, he said in an interview that he will stay on with Blaine County as long as it takes to get the new consolidated dispatch center up and running at the county's new public safety facility in Hailey. He said just a few more issues need to be ironed out before that can happen, likely by the first of the year.
"We're very close to that," he said.
Greenlaw's departure has set off a rapid search for his replacement. Blaine County Administrator Mike McNees said he will circulate the job posting sometime this week. He said the search will be as wide-ranging as needed to find a suitable replacement for Greenlaw, though the county would like to hire locally if possible.
"Obviously, that would be great," he said. "But we need to throw out a wide net."
The person hired to replace Greenlaw will be a regular full-time employee of the county. The hourly job pays about $75,000 a year, McNees said.
Greenlaw was hired as a contract employee in the beginning, but just in the past month the county changed that and made him a regular county employee.
Under the original terms of his contract, Greenlaw was hired to bring about the transition to a consolidated dispatch center in the county and to develop policies and procedures to insure the center becomes nationally accredited. Though the center isn't accredited yet, the steps have been taken to make sure that happens, he said.
In his new position at Ada County, Greenlaw will be in charge of supervising five project managers working on various emergency communications upgrades and maintenance issues for its dispatch center, which is run by the sheriff's department. He said the department needs only to run a background check on him before it can complete the hiring process.
"They're looking for someone to run the projects," he said.
Here in Blaine County, the county's new emergency communications official will have a slightly different set of responsibilities from Greenlaw's.
"It will be about running the (consolidated dispatch) center and working with the user agencies," McNees said.
