The Buckingham County Volunteer Rescue Squad (BCVRS) is set to appear before the county’s board of supervisors during its Monday meeting in an effort to explain financial and operational concerns, as well as quell claims of alleged wrongdoing.

BCVRS leadership has denied some of the claims made publicly in mid-November by Jimmy Strong, a 29-year volunteer with the organization, who told supervisors he was “kicked out.” During the board’s November meeting, Strong told supervisors “there is no longer a Buckingham County Volunteer Rescue Squad. The squad is now a paid thing. You don’t have enough volunteer members to man a squad,” Strong said, noting the leadership appointed themselves “on purpose … who wanted (Delta Response Team, or DRT) to come in here. They kicked UVa (University of Virginia’s Medic-5) out.”

According to Kerry Flippen, the squad’s current chief operating officer and incoming vice president of BCVRS’ board of directors, the squad recently issued a request for bids to emergency medical service providers, with Appomattox-based DRT returning the lowest bid.

BCVRS contracted UVa’s Medic-5 since contracted crews were first used in Buckingham, in 2006.

“We bid it out,” Flippen said. “We got four bids back. And DRT was the lowest.”

While Flippen said he’d “rather not” divulge the cost of the contract with DRT, which will begin serving the county on Dec. 15, he said the difference in cost between Medic-5 and DRT was “substantial.”

“It was enough difference in it that we could continue with the two crews … and add a weekend crew,” Flippen said.

According to Flippen, BCVRS has 29 volunteers to serve the entire county. Twelve, he said, are EMTs, six are drivers, three are students and eight are inactive, but still on the rolls of the agency.

A new board of directors will go into effect in January, said Flippen, noting elections were held Nov. 28.

According to Strong, the squad has “made it so where you couldn’t volunteer,” noting there were a “bunch of people” who would volunteer “if they didn’t have this clique in place.”

DRT, Strong told supervisors, “is going to have the power over you, because you’re required by law to furnish the rescue squad … These people have you right where they want you.”

Strong alleged the bids for contracting were not sealed, and told supervisors UVa was a “boon to Buckingham County, offering “freebies,” including training.

“They’re spending much more than they’re getting,” he said of the squad’s finances. “I don’t know what the answer is, folks … We lost big time.”

Following Strong’s comments, District Three Supervisor Don Matthews suggested looking at the financial side of what has happened during the last year in order to base a decision.

“We just can’t jump out there and do something crazy right now,” Matthews said, adding a recent audit of the rescue squad “would tell us some stuff that was going on, but it’s not going to give us the total picture of the financial side of it.”

County Administrator Rebecca S. Carter, who met with squad officers several weeks ago, said BCVRS needed “more money.”

“And I said that I needed to see their financials,” Carter said. “We needed to see how the money was being spent, and that I would arrange for us to sit down, the full board, sit down with them and see what can be done or what’s not being done right.”

According to Carter, BCVRS never “requested the $195,000 that the county appropriates to them. So, they did write that request that day to get that money. So they do have the $195,000.”

Flippen said the squad still has volunteer status.

“And even though we do have the paid … staff, if you check your surrounding counties, for the most part, most everyone is doing that now, or they have coverage, particularly during the daytime,” he said.

In an email to Carter, Flippen said the bids “were received in the mail and not opened until the meeting was called to order. The bids were sealed and NO ONE knew what the other had bid.”

Flippen said volunteers still control the squad, with its board of directors made up all of volunteers.

“There are no paid crews on it. No paid staff on it, period,” Flippen said.

Lisa Dunkum, the agency’s current public relations officer, will become president in January.

“We don’t have that kind of money to continue to pay,” Dunkum said. “And UVa has done everything that they could to make more money. They charge for overtime, they send out three medics when our contract says two medics.”

Roughly six volunteers have left the agency in the past year, Flippen said.

“Nobody forced them out. The paid crews didn’t force them out … They did it on their own accord,” he said.

According to Flippen, DRT will provide service seven days a week during the day and at night. Two paid crews will work during the day Monday-Friday, while one crew will work at night seven days a week. One paid crew will work on Saturday and Sunday, Flippen said.

“On the weekends, and then during the week at nighttimes, we’ll also have volunteer crews running because some of the volunteers can’t run on the weekend and so they have chosen to run at night,” he said. “For us to get back to where we would like to be, it’s going to take a while. And, I don’t think you’ll ever see volunteers do it all.”

He said he would like to see the squad “where we just have career staff during the daytime … five days a week.”

Dunkum said the organization had problems getting volunteers to run calls.

“This was before my time on the squad,” she said. “When people are working in the daytime, it is extremely hard to get people to leave their jobs.”

Dunkum added, “The volunteers are going to continue to run (their) calls, run (their) shifts.”

She also said the squad “had some issues with Medic-5 not wanting our volunteers to be on their truck … They didn’t want our volunteers out on the truck with them.”

Flippen also cited “personnel issues” with Medic-5, but didn’t elaborate.

“If you push out the volunteers, you’re going to hurt the whole community,” Dunkum said. “We’re not going to do that.”

BCVRS, she said, has “had some issues … where people want to be on the squad as a volunteer and they don’t want to run the calls.”

Dunkum said the bids for contracted services were delivered to officers sealed.

“We have to look at the fact that the squad cannot go on the way it was going with the money,” Dunkum said, noting the agency’s finances.

“The transition should be pretty smooth,” Flippen said. “It’s going to be the same medic level of coverage.”