JOHN COFFELTContributor

The Coffee County 911 Communication Center Board of Directors voted during the Dec. 18 meeting to create a county-wide rotation list of on-call wrecker services.

The change, slated to begin Jan. 1, is intended to streamline the process of dispatching wreckers to accidents.

911 Director Sam Harper said the move will take all subjectivity from the process of deciding which wrecker will be called.

The county will retain a 30-minute estimated response time for wreckers arriving on the scenes regardless of where they are responding from. 

“I’ve not had any complaints at all of wrecker response times,” Coffee County Sheriff Chad Partin said. “We’re sitting on the side of the road; we have plenty of paperwork to be doing. We’ll work with them.”

Operation Manager Bob Jarmin told the board that he had called all the county’s approved wrecker services concerning the change.

According to Jarmin’s polling, of the 14 companies, six were okay with serving the whole county, three preferred separate areas and four had no opinion either way. 

October special call meeting addresses wrecker services

A special call meeting of the Communication Board was held Oct. 23 to address several issues with the county wrecker services, ranging from questions of pricing for winching to an initial discussion of combining the rotation lists.

At one point in the meeting, according to the approved minutes from that meeting, Partin made a motion to clear the room and move from an open meeting to a hearing concerning an alleged policy violation by Devil Dawg Towing.

According to those minutes, the owner of the towing service was present.

The board accused the wrecker company of overcharging motorist services on May 8 and another on Aug. 24.

County policy discipline matrix calls for a 45-day suspension on the first offence and a 120-day suspension up to permanent removal for the second. Citing the time elapsed between the hearing and the alleged offence, the board felt it should treat the two offences as one single offence.

Devil Dawg Towing had been suspended on Sept. 7, so the board unanimously agreed to reinstate the company on Nov. 12.

According to recorded statements to the board, the owner, Cecil Harden, told the board he could not go back and look up the calls for these dates. He is said to have told the board that the charges were billed by the information he had received.

Partin, at that meeting, said the charges were allegedly in violation of county policy regarding the price, an “Extra Man” charge and a storage charge for the vehicle and for winching services.

The county alleged that the customer should not have been charged $65 for an extra man because the person driving the truck to the scene was not listed with the county as a driver for the company.

Harding is quoted as telling the board that the employee driving the wrecker was returning from a non-county related call when the dispatch came in. Partin said the company should have declined the call if the driver was not on the county list.

The alleged dispute concerning the storage comes from whether the vehicle was stored indoors. The owner said he knew the owner of the vehicle and that it was stored indoors.

Another allegation addressed concerned winching. Per Jarmin, the county policy loosely defines winching as an extra service needed (and charge) for pulling a vehicle from a ravine or similar situation. However, the company allegedly charged the customer’s insurance for winching for having to use a sled and a winch to pull the vehicle onto the wrecker due to it going into gear.

The allegations of policy violations on Aug. 4 include overcharging complaints for an extra man fee, a processing fee and a cleanup fee.        

The minutes of the meeting suggest that the customer was overcharged for a cleanup fee, a charge of $45 per day for 13 days when policy states that the charge should be $35 for only 11 days.

Further, the county said that a winching fee was not within policy.