Staff report

GRANITE QUARRY — Granite Quarry Fire Chief Dale Brown submitted his resignation to Town Manager Phil Conrad on Tuesday evening. Brown had been chief since August 2014.

The town said in a short news release Tuesday that Conrad named maintenance supervisor Jason Hord as the interim fire chief. Hord also will continue in his full-time capacity as head of the town’s maintenance department.

“We wish to thank Chief Brown for four and a half years of dedicated and valued service to the town,” the news release said.

Brown helped guide the town’s purchase and delivery of a new firetruck in 2015.

In June, he offered to resign during a Board of Aldermen meeting. He was angered by comments from a former alderman who questioned proposed budget increases for Fire Department staffing, deletions of equipment, the answering of too many mutual-aid calls to “far-flung” districts, and a lack of long-range planning.

The current Board of Aldermen would not accept Brown’s resignation that night.

At the board’s annual retreat in February, Brown detailed the problems his department has had in staffing and recruitment of trained firefighters, which is a challenge for many county departments depending on combinations of paid full-time and part-time firefighters along with volunteers.

Brown stepped into the chief’s job April 7, 2014. He first served as interim chief, replacing Mark Troublefield, who became a fire marshal for Rowan County.