The Hoke County Board of Commissioners recognized the county’s newest fire investigators at its meeting on May 20.
Earlier this month, Hoke Emergency Management Director and Fire Marshal Bryan Marley and Assistant Fire Marshal Chris Douglas both passed the Certified Fire Investigator exam.
According to the county, the process to become a fire investigator takes five to seven years and a cumulative hundreds of hours of required training, work experience and over 200 hours of prerequisite training just to qualify for the exam.
At the meeting, County Manager Letitia Edens congratulated Marley and Douglas for passing the exam.
“That is the best you can do in the state. So we have two certified fire investigators in the state of North Carolina. They can actually go do fire investigation anywhere in the state of North Carolina and we have two of them here in Hoke County,” Edens told the board.
Marley has been Fire Marshal since 2017 and Chris joined Hoke County in 2023 after retiring from the Army.
The board was also updated on the collected taxes, with a collection rate slipping slightly versus last year.
“The total collected for the month of April was $295,536.72 at a 95.95% rate compared to the 96.37% rate last year,” said Tax Collector Daphne Graham-Dudley. “Prior years collected was $107,030.01 at a 53.23% rate compared to a 49.38% rate last year. So the total collected for the month of April was $402,566.73.”
The Hoke County Board of Commissioners will next meet May 29.
