Warren County supervisors didn’t look far for a new emergency management director, hiring Warren County deputy Sgt. John Elfer to replace EMA director Gwen Coleman, who retires Thursday.

The supervisors met for more than an hour in closed session Tuesday to interview Elfer and two other candidates individually before voting 3-2 in open session to hire him.

Supervisors Charles Selmon and William H. Banks opposed the hiring, saying the board should have conducted a wider search for a new director.

The county has a policy of hiring for a job opening from within if there is a qualified county employee, Supervisor Bill Lauderdale said.

Besides Elfer, the supervisors interviewed Chuck Tate, a retired U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hydraulics engineer, part-time 911 dispatcher and a member of the county’s Local Emergency Planning Committee and Mary Coffee, a corrections officer with the sheriff’s department, who has worked in the department since 2004.

“We need to go outside of Warren County and seek more people,” Selmon said. “I don’t think this was fair. We only talked to three applicants before hiring someone. We need to give other people in Warren County the opportunity to apply for positions that they pay taxes for.”

Selmon offered a substitute motion to table action and get more applicants, but it failed by a 3-2 vote with Lauderdale and Supervisors David McDonald and Richard George opposing.

“I’m just excited at the opportunity to continue to serve the people of Warren County,” Elfer said after the meeting.

A native of Atlanta, the 39-year-old Elfer has a degree in criminal justice from the University of Southern Mississippi. He has been an officer with the Hattiesburg Police Department, and has been a deputy with the sheriff’s department since 1998. He served in the Mississippi National Guard as a captain in the military police with the 31st Rear Operations Center in Jackson from 1998 to 2007.

He was the National Guard liaison officer with the Harrison County Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina, where he helped coordinate the Guard’s support of search and rescue teams, and for emergency shelter, and food and water distribution after the storm.

Coleman announced her retirement on June 6. She retires from the emergency management office after 32 years, the last five as director. She started as a planner in 1979 in what was then known as Vicksburg-Warren County Civil Defense. She was named director in November 2006.

The county’s emergency management office serves as an emergency operations center from which local, state and federal authorities stage efforts during natural disasters.

In a related emergency management matter, the supervisors lifted the mandatory evacuation for Eagle Lake and extended the county’s state of emergency until July 31. Vicksburg officials took similar action on the state of emergency on Friday.