Department heads spill the numbers at Pulaski Fiscal Court

Jan. 26—Several Pulaski government department heads brought the statistics to Tuesday's Fiscal Court meeting, and the numbers don't lie: Pulaski weathered last week's snow storm fairly effectively.

The head of 911 Dispatch and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) gave magistrates a rundown of what the county saw during the winter weather, while the county's Solid Waste director showed the numbers on his department's efforts to clean up Pulaski.

The meeting had begun with Magistrate Mark Ranshaw giving kudos to the county's first responders who worked throughout the storm — "fighting the ice and snow to get to people who needed them," as he put it — and he highlighted the Somerset-Pulaski Special Response Team and Somerset-Pulaski Rescue Squad.

But when Pulaski 911 Dispatch director Beverly Haynes got up to give her report, she singled out her department as being in need of recognition as well.

"While I do appreciate the road department and everything everybody done, we always work great with them — first responders, we always work great with them — dispatchers need to be recognized too," she said.

Ranshaw acknowledged dispatchers, saying, "I automatically group 911 with the first responders."

Haynes asked IT Coordinator Jason Hancock to explain to the court how many calls a four-person dispatch crew would take in a week.

Hancock said the for the week before the snowstorm, dispatch answered 2,359 calls and was involved with 1,251 computer dispatch system (CAD) calls, which he described as "anything an agency touched."

For the week during the storm, dispatchers answered 2,317 regular calls and took 83 calls on the Emergency Operations line, for a total of 2,400 calls. They also had 1,122 CAD calls.

Hancock attributed the lower number of CAD calls during the storm to being "the difference in traffic stops and stuff where it was kind of hard to pull them over in the snow."

Emergency Management Director Don Franklin added his thanks to the dispatchers who worked during the snow event.

"We ran the EOC for almost an entire week during the storm. We had SRT and Rescue Squad individuals up there helping with that. Had a few hiccups. We're going through some growing pains, but the dispatchers always pick up the ball and run with it," he said.

Franklin likewise had some numbers for the court, saying that between SRT and the Rescue Squad, EOC had 99 runs.

While he didn't have the breakdown on specifics, he said that the Rescue Squad had 44 runs that included essential personnel transports, EMS assists, dialysis transports and doctor's appointment transports.

The SRT had 55 runs, which broke down as: 26 essential personnel, five EMS assists, 11 dialysis transports, two medicine deliveries — "one of which was out Hammond' s Camp, which I don't think there was a track out there, but they were able to make it," — five motorists assists, four motor vehicle accidents, and three transports to doctors appointments.

Franklin also noted that there were a few water line breaks throughout the county, and a few localized power outages in the South Kentucky RECC network which they were able to resolve quickly. "Nobody went without power for more than a couple hours," Franklin said.

Solid Waste Director Danny Masten offered more of a year-round look at his department via his numbers.

In 2023, they recycled 9.5 million pounds, or just over 4,750 tons, of material.

"Almost 8 million pounds of that was cardboard alone," Masten said. "That just tells you how much cardboard we use as a community, through all the businesses and homes that are getting Amazon packages every day."

He also noted that the program picked up 2,000 tons of material through the curbside program, but added that not all of that material was recyclable, "Because some people don't always recycle things that can we recycle."

As for road litter, Masten noted "We as a partnership cleaned up 1,889 miles. The majority of that was done by Jailer (Anthony) McCollum's crew."

He added, "To give it some perspective, they picked up 18,296 bags of garbage off our county roadways, (and) 616 tires."

Masten said that those crews were out picking up trash on Tuesday, despite snow still being on the ground.

Carla Slavey can be reached at cslavey@somerset-kentucky.com