Fire Chief Retires

From the city:

After more than 35 years of service to the City of Carbondale, Fire Chief John Michalesko has announced his retirement effective September 11, 2015. "It has been an honor and privilege to serve the citizens of Carbondale from the beginning as a fire fighter up through the ranks to that of Fire Chief," Michalesko states.

Carbondale City Manager Kevin Baity has named Assistant Fire Chief Steve McBride to serve as the Interim Fire Chief. He will continue his current command staff duties and attend to the immediate needs of the role of Interim Fire Chief until the vacancy can be permanently filled.  

City Manager Baity announced that the new Fire Chief will be promoted from within and there are two well qualified Assistant Fire Chiefs who have indicated a desire to seek the position, Assistant Chiefs Ted Lomax and Doug Biggs. Between them they have a combined 50 plus years of firefighting experience and 24 years of command staff experience. He further stated, “ Last week I met with Chief Michalesko and the three Assistant Chiefs and discussed the selection process. Due to this being an in-house selection, the process and timeline for announcement should be rather quick. I anticipate naming a new Fire Chief in October. " 

Residency Requirements

In a letter to her email list, Jane Adams pointed out a change to residency requirements on the agenda for tomorrow night's city council meeting. Currently, executive city employees are required to live within the city limits, all other city employees must live within 9 miles of the city, Under the current ordinance, this means that only 10 out of all the city employees are required to live in Carbondale. From the proposed ordinace: 

Pay Grade 9 City Attorney, Public Works Director, Finance Director, Police Chief, Fire Chief,
Administrative Services Director (Human Resources), Development Services
Director (Building, Planning/Zoning, Code Enforcement)

Pay Grade 8 Accounting Manager, Maintenance & Environmental Services Manager (PW),
Information Systems Manager (IT), Water Operations Manager

Pay Grade 8 Exemptions
Deputy Police Chief (2), Police Lieutenant (4), Assistant Fire Chief (3)

The City Manager position (unclassified pay grade) and the City Clerk (pay grade 6) are also
required to reside within the City limits according to City Code.

The city has not had a Police Chief since last summer, after the firing of then Chief Jody O'Guinn. Jeff Grubbs has filled the position as Interim Police Chief since then and both Mayor Mike Henry and City Manager Kevin Baity have expresses satisfaction with his work and a desire to hire him as Police Chief. However, Grubbs lives outside the city, but within the 9 miles required. For Grubbs to accept the position, he would need to sell or otherwise dispose of his current residence and move within city limits.

Furthermore, Fire Chief John Michalesko plans to retire in the near future, meaning that the city will either need to promote from within or recruit a new chief from outside. Apparently, the requirement to live within city limits is seen as a impediment in either case.

It would appear then, that while the city works to bring in outside businesses, students and new residents, city staff do not see it as a particularly desirable location to live and that requiring higher pay grade officials to live here is an impediment to recruiting them.

Below are the four options city staff has presented and the staff recommendation. You will note that leaving things as they are is not one of the four optioned presented:

A number of options were reviewed that include:
1. Require all new employees to live within the City limits. This is not an option as the police and fire
unions’ contract allow for residency within the 9-mile boundary. This matter was the subject of a legalcase in which the unions wanted to extend the boundary to greater than 9 miles. The result was a rulingin favor of the City to retain the 9-mile boundary.

2. Create more exemptions for more classes of executive employees, similar to the 1999 and 2005 Councilactions. This only serves to further alienate the few remaining employees who are bound by the Citylimits requirement. This could also lead to a discrimination law suit brought by those remaining nonexempted employees.

3. Eliminate the City limits requirement for executive employees. In other words, all employees have thesame rights and must live within the 9-mile boundary. The argument against this is “there will be a largenumber of employees leave the City limits.” As indicated above, currently only 10 employees (3.7%) arebound by this requirement therefore there cannot be a large number of employees leave the City.

4. Eliminate all residency requirements. Due to the previous legal decision in favor of the City and the 9-mile residency boundary, this is not a viable option. Each time the police and fire union contracts are upfor renegotiation, they try to argue extending the boundary; this year the argument was from 9 miles to20 miles.

RECOMMENDATION:
After conducting a review of the history presented above and the significantly small number of employees affected by the current City limit residency requirement, it is recommended the City Council choose Option 3above and adopt an Ordinance eliminating the City limits requirement for executive employees in pay grades 8 and 9, the City Manager and the City Clerk.

Local Fires

Ran in to Fire Chief John Michalesko yesterday so had to ask him about the fire situation locally (Like he hasn't been asked that a hundred times already).  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that people have actually listened to all the warnings about the grass and brush being dry as tinder and to not start fires.  According to Chief Michalesko, Carbondale has less than half a dozen small fires since the heat wave started, with only a couple caused by kids playing with fireworks.  The worst problem, surprisingly, wasn't people throwing cigarettes out of cars along the highway, though it does involve cigarettes.

Apparently, there have been several instances of small grass fires out by University Mall, caused by people throwing cigarettes out there.  Happily, according to the Chief,  the fires have all been small and the fire department handled them quickly.