Creek County Ambulance Assistant Director Joe McGill will serve as the organization’s Interim Executive Director until the Board is able to find a replacement for the late Rita Diehl, who passed away in June. The Board made the decision during a lengthy Executive Session at its Thursday evening regular meeting.
The Board also authorized McGill with three important tasks—to find an experienced recruiter to help find a replacement for Diehl, to hire an outside firm to oversee accounting for all operations until it can hire a dedicated accountant or a new executive director with financial experience, and to engage a company to take over payroll.
The bulk of the meeting consisted of Board members, McGill, and Public Information Officer Kerry Harlin reviewing reports and financial statements from the last month.
McGill explained that he and Harlin had a learning curve when faced with understanding the ins and outs of Diehl’s system, but that they had hired an accountant from Central Tech in Drumright to help them temporarily and that they were making progress in getting all the accounts organized and reconciled.
The accountant spent around 9 hours with them over the last few weeks, but said she expected to do only 2-3 hours of work a month for them. Additionally, they can call her anytime with questions without incurring her $25 an hour billing rate.
McGill said both the accountant and other ambulance service employees with whom he has spoken have expressed surprise that a company like theirs with over 75 employees has neither a dedicated accountant on staff nor a company to do its payroll.
Board member Sean Downes inquired whether it would be wise to temporarily outsource the accounting, so McGill and Harlin can spend their time running the operations rather than putting it on other employees.
McGill confirmed that none of their employees have formal accounting experience, and that he and Diehl have been discussing hiring a payroll service for years.
Downes opined, “I think we need to outsource it and figure out a service provider and how they would interface with our operations and let these guys get back to running this place from an operational standpoint, before we get too far behind.”
Dugger responded, “My only hesitation is with the role of Executive Director. Do we require that they have financial responsibility? Or are we pulling that out and making it a separate position? Rita was able to do both.”
“We’re at a crossroads right now,” said Downes. “We need that skill set on board,” agreed Dugger. “An accounting group that’s familiar with [our industry] that can produce a good, reliable budget that would pass [the State]. Good hard numbers that are auditable.”
The Board agreed unanimously to table approval of the financial reports until its next meeting and to immediately initiate finding vendors for interim bookkeeping and controller-type functions as well as establishing a third party to do payroll.
The question of whether to hire a separate on-staff accountant or to require the new executive director to have financial experience was left for a future decision.
Finally, the Board approved the calling of an emergency meeting in two weeks, on Thursday, August 26th, to revisit financials, accounting, and bookkeeping, and the hiring of companies to outsource accounting and payroll tasks.
