The Jessamine County Fire District's Board of Trustees voted 4-0 last night to reopen the inquiry that the board suspended last month.
Former board chairman Dave Eldridge had said he resigned July 14 because the board took no action on his findings into the allegations, but trustee Gary Sorrell had said there was no evidence to substantiate the complaints.
Last night, the board elected Sorrell as the new board chairman, then went into a 40-minute closed session to discuss personnel.
When the trustees returned to open session, they voted to reopen the investigation. Sorrell said it will be conducted by a professional investigator, "preferably someone outside this community" who would have no preconceptions or familiarity with anyone in the 60-member volunteer department.
The board also voted 4-0 to set a $5,000 limit on the cost of the investigation. The fire district is a special taxing district funded through property taxes and other sources.
Later, Preston Kennedy, a citizen who attended the meeting, offered his services as a prospective investigator. Kennedy said he was a former chairman of a fire district in McCracken County and had been a newspaperman for 39 years. The board took no action on Kennedy's offer.
But Sorrell pledged that action would be taken to end the continuing controversy, which he compared to the lingering odor left behind after a skunk has been removed from a barn.
"We're going to get the stink out of this fire department," Sorrell said.
Sorrell criticized news coverage of the matter, and noted a television report last week in which a firefighter, shown only as a silhouette, alleged that firefighters had been impaired by alcohol when responding to calls. Six complaints to the board have made similar accusations.
Sorrell compared that unidentified firefighter to Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network linked to the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C.
"He took out some firefighters, and he's in hiding," Sorrell said.
Several news organizations, including the Lexington Herald-Leader, have filed open-records requests to see the complaints and papers that Eldridge submitted to the board. But Sorrell and other trustees said the board had never formally closed the investigation, and Sorrell said those documents will not be made public until after the investigation is finished.
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