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Goshen substation more than fire trucks and ambulances
Citizens can pick up incident reports, pay county water, sewer bills
station 2
Effingham County Sheriff Jimmy McDuffie, with interim county administrator Toss Allen, county finance director Joanna Wright, commissioners Phil Kieffer and Vera Jones, executive assistant Karen Arnold, EMTs and Rincon firefighters alongside, discusses the features and benefits of the Goshen substation. - photo by Photo by Pat Donahue

The Effingham County Sheriff’s Office has joined county paramedics and Rincon firefighters at their station on Goshen Road Extension.

The ECSO has opened a substation at the nearly 10,000-square-foot building Effingham County EMS and the Rincon Fire Department have manned since the end of 2012.

“We’re open for business,” Sheriff Jimmy McDuffie said with a smile as he and other county officials announced the official opening of the ECSO substation at 109 Goshen Road Extension.

Along with providing deputies a work area on the south end of the county, the substation gives the public a place to pick up incident and accident reports or file a police report. They also can pay their county water, sewage and sanitation bills.

The operating hours are Monday-Thursday from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-6:30 p.m.

“Anything that we can do to facilitate helping the citizens better, what services they’re getting, I think it’s our job to try to do that,” McDuffie said. “We’re hoping it’s going to be a big benefit to the people on this end of the county especially.”

County officials are hopeful the new substation, near the Goshen Park Commercial Center and Goshen Crossing Apartments, will save some people a trip to Springfield to conduct county business.

Reports can be picked up at the main sheriff’s office Monday-Thursday between 8 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Effingham County administrative offices are open Monday-Friday from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

“This station being here will help the people that live in the south end but also the people that live in the north end that drive to work in Savannah every day and they can only get here by a certain time,” county Commissioner Vera Jones said. “So it’ll be a major benefit to the citizens.”

The Goshen station was built to last 50 years, according to the county. The intent from the beginning was for the ECSO, EMS and fire department to share the building, but the latter two had greater facilities needs and moved in first, McDuffie said.

He added that, in the months that followed, the ECSO worked with the board of commissioners, interim county administrator Toss Allen and the county’s finance and purchasing departments to devise funding and staffing the substation.

“We were able to fund this project without any cost to the taxpayers because we moved assets that we already had from the admin building down to the Goshen station,” McDuffie said. “The actual cost to the taxpayers stayed the same.”

Rincon has two fire trucks at the Goshen station, and there is one ambulance with one in reserve.

Along with the services already offered at the Goshen station, the county hopes to add more in the future, according to McDuffie.

“We want people to be able to come here and it almost be a secondary county admin building,” he said. “We want it to be where the citizens of Effingham can come here and do almost as much as they can at our office or over at the county offices.”

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