More Trouble in the Fire Department

Although the public may never get a good understanding of the problems ongoing in the Fire Department for the past year and a half, one thing that has been made clear to the public is that the department has suffered from factionalism. We know that a faction of six people presented complaints to the Board of Selectmen about the department, resulting in the firing of two people (a faction). After the firing, when I went to observe a department meeting, I saw the volunteers sit on one side of the room and the career firefighters on the other. The room looked factionalized. 

Before the firings, the department was fully staffed. Since the firings, the department has had substantial turnover, particularly among the career firefighters. The department is currently short three full-time staff, making it unable to consistently staff the Fire Station for emergency calls. This doesn’t mean that calls go unresponded to. It just means that on-call members of the department respond, which takes considerably longer. While undesirable, this is not unusual. It’s just the situation the town had before the voters decided in 2022 to staff the Fire Station 24/7 to improve emergency response. 

The high turnover in the department suggests that people are unhappy working there. They’ve not made public statements about their resignations. Maybe they’re just unhappy with the low pay Nottingham provides. Maybe it’s because the firings didn’t solve anything; they just changed the nature of the problems.

There is now publicly available information suggesting that the factionalism has roots in a personal conflict between the former and current Chiefs. That information can be found in the comments section on this blog, where Shannon Curry and someone she claims is Jaye Vilchock writing under a pseudonym make accusations and counter-accuations. Read the exchange for yourself to decide what to make of it. It is reprinted below to provide a record should the participants change their responses. 

Yesterday the town’s Police Chief responded to an anonymous allegation that Fire Chief Curry had violated town policy by carrying a weapon while on a fire call. Her response was, “As a general rule, we do not respond to anonymous complaints, especially over email. Specifically speaking, you simply can't just state something, not substantiated (hearsay), and unidentified.”

There have been concerns that Fire Chief Curry has missed important duties. He failed to show up at a Board of Selectmen meeting where he was supposed to have been sworn into office and where the Fire Department needed to be represented regarding the closure of the bridge on Rt 152 over North River. He has failed to name a Deputy Fire Chief, or to replace the two Fire Lieutenants the department has lost in the past year. 

Although no one in the department has spoken up about it, the department’s new bylaws have a controversial provision about how to select the Chief. The old bylaws said that the Chief was to be elected yearly by the volunteer members and then confirmed by the Board of Selectmen to the appointment. (In other words, the board could fail to confirm, meaning that the board could veto the members’ selection of Chief.) This method of selecting the Chief was enacted by the voters via a warrant article.

The new bylaws make this the new procedure for selecting the Chief:

The Chief will be selected by a process that involves both the Department Membership and the Board of Selectmen. The Chief may be a member of either the Full time / Career / Per Diem Membership or the On-call membership. The selection process of the chief will begin at the time of the Chief’s vacancy, and proceed as follows:

1. The Chief’s vacancy will be posted on applicable “job posting boards” to appropriate outlets for a period of at least 3 weeks.

2. All applicants will submit a letter of interest and resume to Nottingham Town Administrator prior to the close of the application period.

3. After the application period is closed, the Town Administrator will work with the NFRD Secretary to make available application packets (digital or paper copies) to the NFRD membership for at least 7 days prior to next step in the process.

4. At the next Regular Monthly Meeting after the close of the application period, the membership of the NFRD will select via majority vote of all the members present, the candidate(s) to move forward for a Town Administrator/ BOS interview. NFRD will also select one member via majority vote to be included on the TA/BOS interview(s).

5. The BOS will use input from the NFRD membership to choose the next Chief, and classify that person as a “Full time”, “Part Time”, or “On-Call” member.

These new provisions turn over to the Town Administrator what the Chief’s qualifications are to be. There’s nothing here that requires the Town Administrator to present all of the applications they’ve received. Ones that the Town Administrator thinks do not meet the town’s requirements could be eliminated at this stage. 

Step 4 does not elect a Chief. It advances one or more candidates to be interviewed by the Town Administrator and Board of Selectmen. The only time anyone in the department gets to interview any of the candidates is after this point. Step 5 is explicit that this is not an election of the Chief. It says “the BOS will use input from the NFRD membership to choose the next Chief.” 

Normally for democratically elected offices there’s a term of office. The old bylaws gave the office of Chief a one-year term. These new bylaws implicitly select a Chief for life. The only time this new selection process is to be initiated is when there’s a vacancy in the role. 

Here’s the warrant article the voters approved in 1995 for how the town was to select a Fire Chief:

I attended the Fire Department meeting where these new bylaws were approved. No one voiced an objection. It looks to me like members of the department are afraid to voice objections about things, for fear of retaliation. 

If the members of the Fire Department are not in a position to object to these bylaws, the voters are in a worse position, because even though they’ve had their say on the warrant article, they have no say in these bylaws. 

Selectman Shirland told the department that the Board of Selectmen approved these bylaws. If the board did so, it had to have been done in a nonpublic session, as there’s no record of it happening in a public session. Why did the Selectmen feel that they should not make their deliberations on this public? 

Why did no member of the department dare question the legality of these bylaws? 

And if they cannot question the legality of the bylaws - a rather public issue - can they question anything else about how the department is being run? Can they even question whether they are being treated fairly? 

Aren’t these the kind of issues that firing the former Chief and Lieutenant were supposed to solve? 

Selectman Shirland also said that the Town Attorney approved the bylaws. Given the warrant article establishing how the town is to select a Fire Chief, does the Town Attorney’s legal judgment look sound to you?

The “Analysis of the Fire Department Fiasco” published here on July 9 pointed to systemic problems in the Fire Department. From that article:

Instead of spending lots of money on an interim fire chief, an extra EMT, an investigator, and legal bills, that money could have been deployed to far greater benefit for the town by putting it directly into fixing the problems in the Fire Department. Such a move might not feel as heroic as calling in an investigator, but it has the benefit of generating far less drama. Drama is often a good thing for political leaders and decision-making bodies when the subject is about policy choices. Drama is almost never a good thing when the subject is about personnel or operations issues. Drama tends to beget more drama.

Drama tends to beget more drama. 

The town spent $87k last year on legal bills. $30k had been budgeted. This year the town must defend itself in court for its firing of the former Fire Chief. After that the town will likely face a defamation suit. 

The Fire Department is having trouble retaining staff. There are indications that there is a hostile work environment there - the thing that was said to have started all of this. The investigation, the firings, the public drama, the court case…. All of these monetary and psychological costs may not have bought the town anything - because they did not treat the root cause of the department’s problems.