The Pender County Emergency Services Department has taken over fire and EMS services, in an effort to cut costs and provide efficiencies. The new county department replaces a longstanding nonprofit service provider.
The road to the reorganization, or merger, of fire and EMS services did not start smoothly.
In March of last year, the Pender County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution vacating the Board of Directors of Pender EMS and Fire, a nonprofit organization that worked with several smaller nonprofits, including local fire departments, to respond to emergency calls. According to the resolution, Pender EMS and Fire was largely funded by public money, including more than $20 million in taxpayer funds in 2024. In early 2025, Pender EMS and Fire was engaged in a contractual dispute with Union Rescue, a volunteer-based subcontractor. The resolution of March 10 states that the Board of Commissioners desired “to bring an expeditious end to that dispute;” and that the county’s governing body had “lost trust and confidence in the current Pender EMS and Fire Board of Directors’ ability to act in the best interest of the residents of Pender County.”
After vacating the Pender EMS and Fire board, commissioners placed themselves in the directors’ seats. The county began the process of absorbing PEMSF’s employees, managing volunteers, and providing services in-house. The county planned to create a whole new Emergency Services department with several divisions, all answering to one director.
An MOU, signed in the fall of 2025 by Randy Burton, the Chair of the Pender County Board of Commissioners, Joy Pittman, the President of PEMSF, and Ricky Rivenbark, the President of the Penderlea Fire Department, laid out the responsibilities of all the parties, including the transfer of assets that were purchased with public funds. The county also agreed to take on all employees, provide them with benefits, and pay them as much as they were making with PEMSF, or more.
The county did not assume retirement and benefits from PEMSF, as it has its own systems for these employment liabilities. The county ended up taking on close to $14.5 million in debt from PEMSF, and assets of $986,384. Assistant County Manager Sarah Fulton wrote that the nonprofit “made an effort to pay off some smaller loans in early 2026 prior to the merger taking effect;” and that the county “assumed all physical assets including property, buildings, and equipment as well as any liabilities such as vehicle and property loans. We also acquired property from Penderlea Fire, including buildings and equipment.”
But as the reorganization was getting underway, about 50 employees of PEMSF quit their jobs, rather than join the county’s new department.
Rick Sauer, the new Pender County Emergency Services director, believes the worst is over. The county just authorized a ninth ambulance that will be on the road, day or night.
A class of 15 firefighters and 8 EMS personnel just graduated last week, and are already on the job. Sauer also expects that current students in an advanced EMT class will be ready to “hit the road in January…by the beginning of the year, we should be pretty close to fully staffed….we’ve really stopped that initial mass exodus from the spring.”
Pender County has a little more than 70,000 year-round residents, but the population surges in the summertime, when visitors flock to local beaches. The county has 16 stations, some fire, some EMS, and some a mix of both, to serve its fluctuating number of inhabitants. Fire services are funded by district taxes, which vary by fire district. EMS services are funded by billing, and by a countywide EMS property tax of $.0925 (nine and ¼ cents per $100 of property value). Both services are also partly funded by the county’s general fund, since Union Rescue, a nonprofit that provides nighttime EMS services, is paid for with a general fund tax. Local fire departments often receive supplemental monies during the budgeting process.
Last year’s MOU stated that the county will develop a strategic plan for fire and EMS services, “and will strive to adopt said plan no later than December 31, 2027.” Sauer hopes that an ongoing analysis will answer questions about response times and call volume, and whether the current level of service is adequate for the population. Next month, he plans to assemble a committee to put together an emergency services and public safety strategic plan, including fire, EMS, law enforcement, and 911 dispatch. He added that the Planning Department and GIS Department will also be involved, “to see where that growth is occurring, and if we can predict where the next large amount of growth will be, and look at call volume, to see if we need to add a station here or add a station there, or add more firefighters or EMTs to certain locations.”
Sauer said much of the work remaining in the reorganization is administrative: standardizing purchasing orders, organizing email addresses, and making sure lines of communication among the various emergency responders remain open. He is currently working with fire departments and community members to assemble a committee to start work on the analysis and strategic plan. His near term goal is to become more efficient, “to get a better handle on where we are, and where we want to go.”
The graduation ceremony for the county’s inaugural fire and emergency services class
will be on Friday, November 6, at 6 p.m., at the Hampstead Annex at 15060 Highway 17 in Hampstead.
