A Knox High School graduate is the new Starke County Emergency Management Agency director. The county commissioners last night hired Jacob Lippner to fill the vacancy created by Ted Bombagetti’s recent resignation to take a state position. Lippner wants to raise the profile of the office and ensure good communication between local, state and federal agencies.
“The resources are the main things, of getting the resources where they need to go at the times they need to go there,” Lippner said. “Knowing who has the resources, and being able to acquire the resources that we actually need. A big portion of the things I want to do is try to get more federal funding. Ted did a great job getting state funding. Now he’s at the state, so we have an in at the state, if you will.”
Lippner says he’s going to focus on grant applications to help the county acquire resources in the short term and eventually realize some longer-term goals of expanding and adding more employees.
Meanwhile, his goal is to be prepared to respond to any sort of manmade or natural emergency situation that might arise in the county.
“We need to find a way to stop an incident from happening. Tornadoes, snow and stuff like that – we’re not going to stop the weather, but we can put things in place to prepare ourselves for the weather. That’s going to be the main push of situations like that where we don’t really know when or how it’s going to happen, but we know it’s going to happen, so be prepared and find a way to make it not be as big an impact.”
Lippner will start his job with the county after he gives his current employer two weeks notice. Bombagetti will continue to handle EMA issues as they arise until Lippner takes over.
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