Higher pay for EMS employees?

April 16, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

Higher pay for EMS employees?

During Tuesday night’s meeting, EMS Director Trent Phipps met with the budget committee of the county commission to ask for hefty hourly pay raises for the 20 EMS medical personnel on the staff. In his request, Phipps is seeking a $5.00 per hour increase in pay for them along with an increase in his own pay going from $61,040 in the 2024-25 budget to $90,000 in 2025-26.

“The line item at the top for my salary. We did that to make me higher (salary) than the highest paid paramedic on the list”, said EMS Director Phipps.

If approved as requested, the total budgeted line item in salaries for the 20 medical personnel combined would increase from $773,406 in the year 2024-25 to $1,021,996 in the year 2025-26. Part time pay would jump from $140,000 to $200,000 and overtime would go from $203,000 to $287,000.

Meanwhile the EMS budgetary line item for contracted services would increase from $40,000 to $75,000 and the uniform allowance would go from $5,000 to $7,000.

The total budget for the ambulance service, if approved as presented, would increase from $1,833,033 in the year 2024-25 to $2,337, 151 in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

DeKalb EMS staff currently work on 24 hours on and 72 hours off schedule.

In addition to addressing the budget committee in person, Director Phipps provided a written explanation for his request.

“Several counties in our area have made significant payroll increases and once again we are finding ourselves behind in the competition for new, young employees. I have a healthy list of part time EMTs and Advanced EMTs, but attracting new paramedics continues to be a problem. In the last few years, we have hired several Basic EMTs that have gone on to complete advanced school and even paramedic school. Some of them are tempted to go to these other counties for better pay and even better benefits. So, retention is a concern. I have submitted information about a few other counties that were found on social media. Some of these are our neighbors like Smith and Cannon, some are farther away but not any larger than DeKalb County. Some of them are running 24/48, so don’t get caught up on the pay rate as much as the yearly salary”.

“Smith County’s starting salary is more than a 15-year employee makes here on the year. The starting pay for Cannon County is our year 17. Cannon is a smaller county with a smaller service and population. They also do not have major tourist attractions like the lake or the Fiddlers Jamboree. Rhea County is very similar in demographics to us. Again, the $65,000 start out for paramedics there is greater than our 15 years pay scale. Bedford County is not a direct competitor to us but they are also starting paramedics out better than our 15-year employees”.

“I understand that many other problems face DeKalb County with jails and schools, but as our community continues to grow, we are going to be very behind on providing care. I would like to suggest a $3.00 to $5.00 raise at the base rate. This will reflect bringing more money for some of the employees that are higher on the pay scale. This will work as a method of retention for the newer employees when they see what a difference 5 years makes on the pay scale,” said Director Phipps.

As for the $35,000 increase costs for contracted services, Director Phipps said “We are using more stuff that involves apps, a cloud-based service through our monitoring to keep up with vital signs and things like that. Its kind of a wave of the future. I am also implementing a drug control program that will cost about $3,000 a year and it tracks all the narcotics where we will scan the labels with cell phones using a proprietary app. It will allow me to track every individual file,” he said.

Budget committee member Glynn Merriman said he thinks a $5.00 per hour increase in pay for EMS medical personnel as requested by Director Phipps is too steep and he isn’t in favor of raising property taxes again, after back-to-back years of tax hikes already.

“On this $5.00 an hour I think that’s going to be hard,” said Merriman. “I know you do great work, but we have had enough with tax increases as it is now. Some of these salaries are way up there. Here’s one (employee) who makes $40,000 and overtime is $6,200 a year. Another one makes $45,000 a year with $10,790 a year overtime. All this overtime is a lot of money. I can’t see giving a $5.00 pay raise. I’m not going to ask the taxpayers for another tax hike. I will not. All this overtime is unreal. Here’s another (employee) with $12,000 overtime. Here’s another with $10,000 overtime, and one with $11,000 overtime. This aint a rich county. I don’t see it,” said Merriman.

In response to Merriman’s concern about overtime pay, Director Phipps explained that “a lot of this year’s overtime that was paid out was filling two positions for about four months. One was filling my position from October 1 until January when I was hired to fill the spot (EMS Director) left vacant. I use mostly part-time people to fill the positions, but they were working the number of hours to pull the overtime. We also had one lady go out on maternity leave,” explained Director Phipps.

“Operating on a 24/72-hour schedule has dropped our overtime payouts significantly,” Phipps continued. “The way the cycles work now there is a couple of cycles in there where you don’t get but 64 regular hours and eight overtime hours. The 24/72 schedule has saved the county a lot of money even though we had to hire more personnel to run the shifts,” he said.

According to Director Phipps a shortage of paramedics creates a demand for them and it’s more difficult to retain personnel when they can make more money elsewhere.

“At the end of the day when you dial 911 somebody is coming and the quality (skill level) of who is coming depends on how much we can pay them,” said Director Phipps. “Every paramedic that works for us has hours upon hours of college credit and more than most nurses”.

“How can we continue to go up (raise salaries) after every other county goes up. There has to be a stopping place”, said Merriman.

The budget committee has not yet acted on EMS Director Phipps’ request.

April 15, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

Proposed DeKalb County Zoning Map Unveiled!

Proposed Zoning Map

During Monday night’s regular monthly meeting, members of the DeKalb County Regional Planning Commission got their first look at what a DeKalb County Zoning Map might look like. The proposed map was unveiled by Tommy Lee, Director of the Upper Cumberland Development District, who serves as UCDD staff planner and advisor to DeKalb County.

The proposed map will be forwarded to the full county commission for review and if the commission still wants to move forward changes could be made before or after it is sent back to the planning commission for further study. The planning commission’s final recommendation for passage of a county zoning resolution and map must then return to the county commission for a vote on implementation followed by a public hearing.

“For the last six months or so the planning commission has been working on a proposed zoning resolution to regulate land use within unincorporated DeKalb County. To go along with that resolution, you must have a zoning map which identifies every parcel in unincorporated DeKalb County and places a zoning designation on that parcel. Tonight (Monday, April 14) what we did was the planning commission reviewed the proposed zoning map and recommended that the county commission review it and give us some feedback on it,” said Lee.

Using neighboring Cannon County’s zoning ordinance as a model, Lee explained that the proposed DeKalb County resolution and zoning map also has basically four zoning districts: residential, commercial, industrial, and agriculture.

“There are four different designations on the zoning map. The color green represents agriculture and makes up about 95% of the county. The yellow designation is for residential. Purple is for industrial and red is for commercial lots,” said Lee.

In September, the county commission voted to authorize the county planning commission to begin the process of establishing criteria for zoning in DeKalb County outside the municipalities which already have zoning subject to a public hearing and final adoption by the county commission.

Proposed Zoning Map

April 14, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

DeKalb West School student, Kaden Mullinax, completed his first half marathon on Sunday, April 6th, racing in the Covenant Health Half in Knoxville. The eighth grader, who is part of DeKalb Middle School’s cross country team, covered the 13.1 mile course in a time of 2:06. He placed 4th in his age group and finished 697th overall out of a field of 2,034 participants, which is in the top one-third.

DeKalb’s cross-country coach, Kristen Van Vranken had this to say, “To accomplish something of this magnitude as an eighth grader is phenomenal. The mental focus and physical exhaustion in a race of this length is so challenging and Kaden conquered his goal and finished. He is a huge part of our cross-country program and a wonderful student-athlete. We couldn’t be more proud of him”.

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