Sign flap doesn't 'reflect' well on Rescue Department

Lynn Ricker of Moose Lane addresses selectmen regarding the problems she had getting a sign installed by the Rescue Department. (Harrison Thorp photo)

LEBANON - “If we can’t find you, we can’t help you.”

Those were the words the Lebanon Rescue Department used to urge residents to purchase special reflective signs for their driveways on the Lebanon Rescue Department website last year.

Lebanon resident Lynn Ricker bought into the idea and the sign, and ordered one last November.

Little would she have guessed that a year later, she’d be in contact with the Attorneys General office over what she characterized as deceit and indifference the department showed her in her yearlong quest to have the sign installed.

Lynn Ricker, and her husband, Samuel, live on Moose Lane.

She said that in October 2012 she received a townwide email saying the Rescue Department was concerned that they were unable to find people’s houses due to street number signs with poor visibility.

Lynn Ricker said she wrote a check out to Lebanon Rescue in November and it was cashed in December.

An image from the Lebanon Rescue Dept. website homepage.

She said she called in March, but received no answer back. However, in April she talked to Assistant Chief Jason Cole, who said he’d have it installed in May.

When he never showed in May or called to explain why, she tried to get a hold of him in June, but was unsuccessful.

“He never showed and he never returned a message,” she said on Tuesday night during a selectmen’s meeting at Town Offices.

In August, she said she sent him a letter and left a private message on the Lebanon Rescue Facebook page.

Jason Cole

Still no answer. She kept calling.

In September Lynn Ricker said she finally caught up with him on the phone, and he told her he hadn’t called her back because his phone was broken after it was crushed by an ambulance. She said he further explained to her that he didn’t answer her Facebook message because he doesn’t go on Facebook.

In fact, Cole is well known for his proficiency in social media, both as an administrator of the Lebanon Community News and an assortment of Lebanon Rescue Facebook pages.

Cole told The Lebanon Voice earlier this year he was one of several administrators of the Lebanon Community News.

She said she kept records of much of the correspondence and hoped for a resolution, but things got worse earlier this month when her husband met up with Cole at a flu clinic held on Veterans Day at the Lebanon Rescue Department’s headquarters on Route 202 in South Lebanon.

She said her husband spoke to Cole face to face, and he promised to come over to their Moose Lane home later that day, but he didn’t.

That was the last straw, she said. 

A few days ago, she came into the Town Offices and said she was unhappy with the situation and told office staff to let him know that if her sign wasn’t installed by the next day, she was going to a local newspaper with the story.

The next day a Rescue volunteer was over at their house installing the sign, a year after she paid for it.

“He had my money for a year before it got done; that’s not right,” Lynn Ricker said.

Ricker said despite the sign’s installation she felt compelled to complain to the state AG’s office earlier this week.

She said a supervisor from the Complaint Examiner and Mediation office was expected to call her today.

“If they’re saying they need these signs to find us and then they take a year to put them in, what does that mean?” she asked. “This never should have gone on so long.”

A phone call to Cole for comments on Ricker’s story was not immediately returned.