Fire rescuers and lots of regular folks have been left wondering: Why did David Motes, who’s paid double for being acting fire chief and as one of a bunch of assistant county managers, fail to follow state law and the county’s own policies after he had an accident that ripped off the front off his county SUV.
So, naturally I asked.
According to the statement I received, which bears his name but appears to have been generated by Motes, AI and a few other contributors, the answer is a perfectly plausible one.
He. Didn’t. Know. His. Front. End. Was. Missing.
Apparently, the bumper and grill of an SUV can simply disappear—and the person driving it may remain completely unaware.
The statement relayed was that a crew in Keystone Heights called for “additional assistance,” and since he was in the area, he responded. It went on to say that Motes was traveling on Darwood Street and saw several areas of standing water across the roadway, which he thought were “passable” since his SUV had all-wheel drive.
While traversing one of these areas, the vehicle encountered what appeared to be an abrupt change in the roadway elevation beneath the standing water. Although this particular area did not appear significantly deeper than the others, I heard a noise beneath the vehicle. At the time, I believed the vehicle may have contacted an unseen limb or other debris concealed by the water.
Motes said he continued to drive to the emergency and “completed the response.” It was then that he “subsequently determined” his front end had gone missing.
I did not return through the affected roadway to retrieve the detached assembly because doing so would have required operating the vehicle through the same conditions without the protection of the front assembly and could have resulted in additional damage.
According to the statement, after he noticed his bumper and grill were gone, Motes drove to the Emergency Operations Center, got another vehicle, notified Logistics of the damage and told them he had gotten another truck.
As I mentioned last week, insiders said no “additional assistance” was needed at the Keystone call-out. Also noted was the accident is going to cost the county over $3,000 to repair and since no accident report was made, the sources said the SUV’s damage cannot be claimed on insurance.
Mechanics blessed with the skills to repair and replace parts recently said Motes could have saved the county a bundle if he had picked up his front assembly and taken it to the county’s car hospital, where it could have been reattached.
Although the accident happened on September 6, there were a few questions still lingering unanswered that his statement did not address, like…Is ignorance really bliss?
Since the acting chief, bless his heart, didn’t realize he’d lost his front end until after he finished responding to the call, should he really be expected to follow state law and county procedures and notify law enforcement—like all other Fire Rescue and county employees?
Was it truly necessary for he and his immediate supervisors, Fire Chief Lorin Mock and County Manager Howard Wanamaker, to spend their valuable time completing those lengthy Risk Management reports about the accident within 24 hours—like everybody else in the county is required to do?
Then there’s the little matter of speed.
Just because Motes’ Automatic Vehicle Locator-GPS has previously recorded him traveling more than 100 mph to calls that were already half over and, according to other fire personnel, he wouldn’t have been missed, do county taxpayers still have a right to know how fast he was going when the front of his county SUV went missing?
Despite the fact that taxpayers are paying him a big-ole double salary, does that really mean he should have to take a drug test immediately after an accident in a county vehicle—like all other employees making one-third his salary must do?
And even though all employees who have an accident in a county vehicle have to go home and wait for the results of the Risk Management’s assessment and the drug test before reporting back to work or being fired—does that mean the acting chief has to go home, too, without grabbing another county truck?
Over the past several weeks, I’ve asked other questions and requested public records to find out the answers.
Motes didn’t notify law enforcement.
No Risk Management reports were available.
The county mistakenly provided me with Motes’ AVL-GPA reading after the accident. I’m still waiting for the one at the time of the accident.
There was no drug test for the Acting Chief.
There was no answer from the county about when Motes returned to work after his accident, but that question appears to have been answered in his group statement. He said he went to Operations, which must have been a bumpy ride since the front of his SUV was missing and at least one of his tires looked like it had been through a road grater, dumped his ailing SUV, got another one and went about his business.
So, after all, the answer to those questions appears to be:
No. No. Still waiting. No. And no—because it appears if you’re the acting fire chief, there is a secret exception clause buried deep in the fine print of the county’s policies-and-procedures manual which includes a special grab-another-truck-like-nothing-ever-happened provision. I’ve checked my reading glasses and I’m still searching for that exception.
Which brings us back to our original question: Is ignorance really bliss?
Apparently so—if you are being paid salaries and benefits larger than most county management employees in the state and you have friends in high places who seem perfectly willing to blissfully look the other way.
Mystery solved. Case closed. Everybody can back to what you were doing.
Because now we know that when you’re at the top of Clay County’s management, the rules are less like “requirements” and more like “suggestions.”