INSIDE

And don’t let the door slam you in...

By Meg Olson

Fire chief Mark Ellison got a dressing down from commissioners before they made his suspension permanent.

At a June 3 special meeting commissioners asked Ellison to defend the list of criticisms he made of the department in a memo they received at their May meeting.

“My general concern is that it comes across as saying the department’s equipment is lacking, in a shoddy state,” said commissioner David Gellatly. “It goes on to say the firefighters are not competent. It goes on to indicate the emergency medical technician (EMT) work is lacking. In the conversations I’ve had with people who have viewed the fire department in operation are very complimentary and I can’t think of many negative reports. So I’m baffled by the information contained here.”

Ellison said he stood by what he had written. “Since 1973 I’ve been involved in five different fire departments and this one has the lowest performance of any I’ve seen,” he said. However, when Gellatly asked him what he based that on he said he was not prepared to answer that question in open session.

Ellison was unable to back up several of his allegations to the satisfaction of the commissioners.

Asked about his claim that training officer and deputy chief Nick Kiniski had shown resistance to his leadership, Ellison simply said they “had different styles.” When Kiniski directly asked if there had been anything he had been asked to do that he had not done, Ellison admitted there had not.

Gellatly asked Ellison, who is not an EMT, to explain what he based his allegation that aid work was not satisfactory. He acknowledged “the majority of time I would be standing by” and that in a year with the department as a volunteer and then as chief he “probably only saw five patients assessed.” He was basing his assertion on drills, he said.

Gellatly also suggested Ellison’s complaints that the chain of command was not being followed may have stemmed from his rapid move to dismantle it. “My understanding from discussions at the steering committee meeting was that it was your intention to dismiss the training officer, remove captains from duties on the fireground,” he said.

“I didn’t see the need for a whole bunch of officers,” Ellison said, adding he felt firefighters could be trained to take command positions as needed. “I intended to change their roles, I did not intend to remove then.”

Overall, commissioners told Ellison, they could not understand why, after spending time in the department as a volunteer and observing operations, he had not mentioned any of the problems he claimed to have observed when they interviewed him for the job in April.

“I thought I’d have the latitude to fix these problems.” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to step on a landmine. I did.” When he reversed himself on decisions such as the removal of medical bags used by EMTs from the quick-response vehicle, Ellison said he “thought the hornet’s nest I had stirred would settle down.” Asked if he had discussed these changes with the chain of command, Ellison said he had not.

“I am struck by the speed with which you wanted to make these changes,” said commissioner Susan Brownrigg. “There was no team, there was no group involvement. From a leadership perspective that doesn’t have a lot of possibility for success.

Maybe some of these were good decisions, maybe it wasn’t the content that was negative, it was the process.”

Ellison’s failure to take on administrative duties was another concern. “You’re basically turning the administration over to Joe and Suzanne,” Gellatly said. “ We made it clear in our interview this job was a part-time office administrator and a volunteer chief,” said commissioner Bill Meursing. “We made it clear, 95 percent in the office, 5 percent out there. Didn’t that give you a clue?”

A key difficulty had been Ellison’s inability to work with former chief Bill Skinner, who had reported Gellatly said, that Ellison had shown annoyance during the single five-hour period he had tried to teach him the department’s filing and reporting system.

Skinner had indicated he would not continue to be on the steering committee set up to manage the transition to a new chief, Gellatly said, because “he does not feel he can be objective.”

Ellison said he had hoped to have department clerk Joe Gary and finance director Suzanne Kinsey act as intermediaries, learning administrative systems from Skinner and then passing them on to him. “I realized working with him (Skinner) was going to be very difficult,” he said. “We think very differently.”

In addition, Ellison said, “there’s very little in the office that can cause injury or death. There are things on the fireground and in an aid call and that’s a priority for me.”

Brownrigg dismissed Ellison’s claim that the department had pressing operational problems that needed fixing at the cost of keeping up with the district administration. “We have not had negative things happen in the field that said this was a community at risk,” she said. ”We’ve had quite a few calls, mostly medical but some big fires and there have been positive outcomes.”

Instead, she suggested, he was either unable or unwilling to do the job he was hired to do, learning and taking over the administrative role Skinner had left vacant.

“We wanted you to have a work group. That didn’t happen,” she said. “Either it didn’t work or you didn’t take the opportunity.” She also questioned whether he really still wanted the job.

“My enthusiasm is certainly diminished,” he said. “I’d like to pull it together and make it work to not have a negative on my record.”

Commissioners did not give him the opportunity. After a brief discussion in executive session they announced they were terminating his position as administrator and volunteer chief.

At their regular meeting June 10 commissioners corrected a procedural error and voted unanimously on a motion to terminate Ellison, as they were unable to take action in executive session at their previous meeting and did not do so when they returned to regular session because the meeting was disrupted by a fire call.

Deputy chief Nick Kiniski gave the chief’s report as acting chief. “Chief Skinner has been excellent in helping me get caught up in administrative work,” Kiniski said. “The fire department is a paper machine but I think we’re pretty well organized.” He commended Gary and Kinsey for keeping the administrative locomotive on the tracks during the messy transition period they had recently been through.

Kiniski also reported on new more cost effective training possibilities, hiring a consultant to do quality improvement check on the reporting procedures, and equipment maintenance issues. Construction on facility improvements is scheduled to beginning July 15.

“My sense is that things are running smoothly,” Gellatly said. “The fire department is responding extremely well in the face of what we’ve been through.”

Commissioners agreed to appoint Nick Kiniski as interim chief for a six-month period and review the position in the fall.