FARMINGTON — The Franklin County Commission voted 3-0 Tuesday to hire Brad Timberlake of Jay as the new director of the Franklin County Regional Communications Center. He starts his new duties Dec. 5.

Timberlake, 37, met with county commissioners Tuesday at their meeting. He currently is a supervisor at Lewiston/Auburn 9-1-1. He has worked there for five years.

He has 16 years of emergency dispatch experience with 12 of those years in a supervisory capacity.

Timberlake has a wife, Amy, and two sons, Dean and Chandler. He has worked police patrol in Franklin County, Wilton, Jay and Livermore Falls. He has been a dispatcher for Livermore Falls, Somerset County Regional Communications Center, Franklin County Regional Communications Center and Jay.

“He did extremely well in the interview,” said Commissioner Bob Carlton of Freeman Township, who said he sat in the second interview with Timberlake. Carlton said he was impressed.

He had about “15 seconds of nervousness” and then he was on task and in the game and did very well, Carlton said.

Timberlake was recognized in 2017 as Supervisor of the Year by the Maine Chapter of the National Emergency Number Association when he worked for the Somerset County Regional Communications Center in Skowhegan.

He is a graduate of Livermore Falls High School. Following graduation he attended a college program as a “Live-In, Firefighter” in southern Maine.  He returned home after the semester’s completion and was encouraged to apply for a position as a dispatcher at a local police department, which was something he had never even considered. He applied and got hired full-time at age 19 and has worked in that capacity ever since.

In 2017, he answered questions for the Sun Journal in a Sunday Face Time series.

He wrote what he got out of being a dispatcher is “a sense of pride knowing that I can be there to assist someone in crisis or during the potentially worst event of their lives. Knowing that my acquired skills are trusted and sought out by a caller in a bad situation.”

What he got out of being a supervisor, he wrote was, “being able to pass along my acquired knowledge in the field. Also, the ability to comfort those that I am supervising after or during a difficult call coupled with the ability to jump in and assist when needed.”

Timberlake will make $71,400 a year as director of the Franklin County Communications Center.

County Deputy Emergency Management Agency Director Amanda Simoneau has been splitting her duties between EMA and the director of the communications center since 2019 after a full-time director left the position.

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