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Even in the height of summer and vacations, Cumberland County is still working to provide services to its residents. During the Tuesday, July 11 Board of Supervisors meeting, local organizations presented what they’ve been up to so far this summer. 

Fire & EMS discusses policies

During Fire Chief Andy Aigner’s update, he covered the recent meeting held by him and the volunteer chiefs in the county about the recent weather events. When these events happened they were able to send alerts through the system and all three stations were staffed to respond quickly. At the meeting, they also discussed an inclement weather policy. 

“Now anytime we send an alert out about inclement weather that policy will take effect and it does a couple of things,” said Aigner.

The policy formalizes what the departments are doing and moves everybody to the same channel on fire and EMS so the dispatchers have to worry about fewer channels. The tree-downs and nonemergency calls will go through the chiefs at each station to manage those around the other calls around the county. They also put a policy to shut down everything not emergency in case of low visibility that one of the recent storms brought. 

With training, courses are still moving forward. There is an emergency vehicle operating course that is set for September and some CPR classes to get volunteers up to speed in the fall after the vacation season is over. The goal is to make these classes available to residents after making the rounds through the fire stations.

Spotlighting new Cumberland County volunteers

Aigner highlighted four volunteers that completed some basic training needed to become a firefighter. Caleb Smith completed the Fire 2 class and Anthony Price and Dylan Jenkins completed Fire 1 and Fire 2 as well as Hazardous Materials Operation.

Casey Fletcher also completed her Fire 1, Fire 2 and Hazardous Materials Operation and was recognized as the star stand out of the class. These classes take numerous hours and are extensive with Fire 1 being over 100 hours with the other two over 50 and 40 hours.

“This was all done as a volunteer and it was free, they were giving their time they did not get back monetarily out of this,” said Aigner. “To have volunteers that are this dedicated is tremendous. This is something we want to feed on and highlight and continue to grow.” 

The library works on new projects

The Cumberland County Public Library has changes in the works to help improve the experience for its patrons. One of these projects is focusing on improving the ability to use computers and be able to print. According to Glenn Mozingo, chair of the board of trustees, the library is looking to have a system configured to print mobility or from a hub for a small charge.

They are also reviewing the vendors they use to make sure that the ones they are paying for are the ones patrons are using. For example, there was a contract with one of the vendors that supplied hotspots taking up around $2,300 of funding. Since the contract wasn’t used in the last year, the library board decided to end the contract to use the funding for something else.

The summer reading program and the summer reading challenge just finished up with 170 youths involved in both programs. These programs also received great support from many local businesses. 

“I think it’s terrific,” said Glenn Mozingo, chair of the board of trustees. “It’s great to see kids reading.”

There is another project underway because the library has books and media that are missing or misplaced. The library is working on locating and properly labeling those as well as working on ordering new books. 

Cumberland County Schools welcome new hires

Superintendent Dr. Chip Jones announced the new hires at Cumberland County Public Schools.  Missy Shore is the new high school principal, Lisa Garcia is the new high school assistant principal and Tyrone Mosby is the new athletic director and career development specialist.

“The thing about all three principals, the elementary, middle and high school principals, they all started as teachers in Cumberland County Public Schools,” said Jones. “They transitioned into assistant principals or assistant to the principals and now they’re principals.”

Even though it’s summer, students have been busy with different activities. Band camp is taking place and the fall sports are starting conditioning. The Virginia State Police Crime Scene Investigation Unit visited the middle students to teach them about how to investigate a crime scene and potential careers. The JROTC attended the JCLC 23 Massanutten Military Academy. The high school’s Future Farmers of America participated in the 97th annual FFA Convention at Virginia Tech and was placed in several categories and named the superior chapter.  

Jones closed with an update on the track project as it is currently underway. The next step is to get it surfaced.