Emergency management position moves to Alpena County Sheriff’s Office
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ALPENA -- At July's Alpena County Board of Commissioner's Personnel Committee meeting, commissioners voted to move the vacant emergency management position to the Alpena County Sheriff's Office. On Tuesday, at the board's monthly bard of commissioners’ meeting, the commissioners approved a motion to request a job description to be drafted as the new EM will have a dual role with the Sheriff's Office.
At July's Personnel Committee meeting, Alpena County Sheriff Erik Smith said that the EM would be a Sergeant who would be a union employee.
"They would do primarily EM stuff, but we can still use them a little bit for other things," Smith said. "Maybe a couple grants or something, but most of their job will be tied up with EM stuff."
Smith said that the prior EM, Nick Modzrynski, was being paid "about" $85,000. He added that moving the position to the Sheriff's Office would cost the county from $7,700 to $23,000 more.
"Believe me, I don't get any benefit of bringing it over," he said. "It's more work, so I really don't care what you guys decide."
Smith said that the benefit of moving the EM position to the Sheriff's Office is that the department has the staff, equipment, and bandwidth to make it a consistent asset to public safety.
"In the last six years we had COVID, and then we had the two ice storms," he said. "The problem we have is like last year we went and got all these generators ... there is still no plan on how we are going to implement those in another ice storm."
"We have to have a plan here in Alpena County and we are not there," he added. "Yes, it will cost you more money to bring it to the Sheriff's Office. I'm only throwing this out there because I want consistency. Our citizens deserve that in our county."
Smith explained that Alpena County is the "biggest community in Northern Michigan" apart from "maybe Marquette and Traverse City." He said that not having a consistent EM position is a hurdle that the county has to address sooner than later.
"We keep kicking this can with the EM and someday it's going to bite us in the rear end," he said. "The Sheriff's Office, we have the equipment."
Smith compared the county's plan with how Cheboygan County combined their EM position with a Lieutenant which he said has been a success.
"Cheboygan County used to be combined with three different counties and Cheboygan County decided that they were getting the short end of the stick and they decided to go on their own."
"That program is going strong," he added. "We had the floods. They did a knockout job, emergency management with that dam up there."
The committee unanimously voted to move the EM position under the Sheriff's Office oversight. Hiring a new investigator, which was previously approved by the board, will be put on hold until the new EM is appointed.
Kayla Wikaryasz can be reached at 989-358-5688 or kwikaryasz@TheAlpenaNews.com.