New mayor and council member take seats in Salem

SALEM, W.Va. (WBOY) — The City of Salem has gone through a lot of changes in the past month, and as of Tuesday, it now has a new mayor and council member at the helm.

Brandie Garner has stepped into her new role as Salem’s mayor after being nominated by her fellow city council members to be the deputy mayor. Her assumption of the role comes after longtime mayor Bobby Samples resigned from the position in June. Councilmember Valerie Lane was nominated to replace Garner as deputy mayor.

With Lane’s appointment as deputy mayor, her Ward Two position on the council is now vacant. The council is looking to fill that position during its next meeting on July 23 at 6 p.m.

The new city council member voted in Tuesday night was Joe Fragmin, who is filling in the Ward Three spot left vacant from a wave of resignations from city officials in June. Fragmin is now the second council member with EMS experience under his belt, having worked in Salem’s Fire and EMS years ago.

“I thought that these new people that are all coming in are gonna be open and transparent, and I thought ‘I’d like to get involved in that’. And I think that’s a really good thing for the town,” said Fragmin.

As of Tuesday night, Salem EMS is still not in operation, but EMS Director Dustyn McConnell told a 12 News reporter that the service will be able to resume operations immediately once it passes inspection by the West Virginia Office of EMS.

McConnell added that operations will not immediately be 24/7 when service resumes, but that crews will slowly get things back up and running. He said that the reasoning behind the slow start is half due to employees and the other half to budget and that this scaled-back model at the beginning will allow EMS to get out of the financial hole it was in before the shutdown and prevent one from happening again.

McConnell told the council he will also be holding a meeting on Thursday, July 11 with former Salem EMS employees about rehiring the team. The meeting will be at 5 p.m. in the armory.

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