County Commission | The Magazine October 2017 | Page 32

FROM THE COVER
go around. “They come
to us as interns from the
(University of North
Alabama); they come to
us as people who may
see a little blurb in the
news and they want to
participate,” he said. “We
have engineers; we have
doctors – just every walk
of life.”
get out,” Bailey said. “It was a long
way around.” In this case, leveraging
every resource including leaning on
the industry’s political clout.
Leverage Every (Human)
Resource
George Grabryan wears two
hats for local government, as
director of a pair of agencies – 9-1-
1 and emergency management –
shared by two jurisdictions. If you
are looking for the top staff person
at Florence-Lauderdale 911 or
Florence-Lauderdale County EMA,
he’s the man.
“We’ve always had a volunteer
component with the operations
we have in the county,” Grabryan
said. “We even have a workers’
comp policy that covers them
while they are volunteering for us,
and that helps eliminate a lot of
potential liability.”
And there’s plenty of work to
32 | COUNTY COMMISSION
Butler County Commissioner Joey Peavy brought
along his friend Layla, a child in foster care, to help
him encourage county officials to be part of solving
“real life” problems in their communities.
Outside the Lines
In some ways, this
idea of leveraging every
resource – no matter
whose it is – represents a
major shift.
“For many, many,
many years, we all
thought we were little
kingdoms, and those
kingdoms did not cross,”
said Culver, elected
commission chairman by