ROSSFORD – The city’s mayor has formed a fire personnel review committee.
But it isn’t without controversy.
Mayor Neil MacKinnon III said at the April 22 council meeting that he had made telephone calls asking people to serve on the committee “to help guide and steer the administration and council in regard to our fire and EMS issues.”
The city has had difficulties finding enough part-time firefighters to cover all shifts and has had to depend on crews from neighboring communities to staff the station.
Rossford and Perrysburg Township are discussing contracting of services for their fire departments where Perrysburg Township would provide staffing at Rossford that the city would pay for.
MacKinnon provided a list of 33 residents and appointed nine more at the meeting, including former fire chief John Vidra, current fire Chief Josh Drouard, two additional firefighters and three council members: Caroline Eckel, Zach Owen and Rachel Tinney.
Absent from the list was council member Brenna Reynolds, who developed the proposal to establish a committee to review fire personnel and presented it at the March 25 meeting.
“I considered her, and I spoke to her, and my goal was to get people that didn’t have any built-in biases and haven’t come out for any of the three plans,” MacKinnon said.
During public comment, Diane Wolff, Jennings Road, said it was “a slap in the face” to not include Reynolds on the committee that was her “brainchild.”
“I’m OK with it,” Reynolds said.
When asked if the firefighters on the list weren’t biased, McKinnon said he didn’t have a choice about appointing them to the committee.
“I asked for people to contact me if they were interested in serving,” he said.
Chris Segura, union representative for the fire department, said the department’s recommendations for committee members were disregarded.
When he asked if any applications were received from the department, MacKinnon said no.
“I did,” said a woman from the back of the room.
“You can’t yell from the back of the room. If you want to say something, you have to come up and state your name and address for the record,” MacKinnon said. “I’m not going to tolerate that. At the end of the day, you’re employees of the City of Rossford.”
“Two of the three that you appointed, you haven’t even spoken to find out if they were interested,” Segura said.
MacKinnon said he talked to both firefighters on the phone. Segura said he was lying.
“You work for me, I don’t work for you,” McKinnon said, which drew sounds of disapproval from the audience.
“You work for all of us,” someone in the audience shouted.
“You do work for every citizen,” Wolff said after approaching the podium a second time. “I take offense to you saying you don’t work for us.”
Segura also wanted to know why Drouard was added to the committee when he was leaving at the end of the month.
“He’s the fire chief. I thought he should see us through the transition,” MacKinnon said.
When asked about the city’s search for a new fire chief, MacKinnon said the job had not been posted.
“I’m working on that right now. I’m talking to different individuals,” he said.
He said after the meeting he planned to appoint an acting chief.
“I really can’t ask anyone to be a full-time chief. We don’t know what we’re doing” with the department, he said.
Rossford and Perrysburg Township has met twice to discuss the future operations of their two departments. Another meeting was planned for this week.
Rossford City Council at its Jan. 8 meeting was presented with three options: Developing a stand-alone full-time department, forming a fire district with one or more neighboring communities, and contracting with a neighboring community.
Reynolds left the meeting immediately after adjournment and was not available for comment.
The scope of her proposal included a review of existing proposals, exploration of additional funding and staffing options, asking for stakeholder feedback and then recommendation of a plan. Her timeline included a first meeting be held the week of April 1 with the first reading of the proposal at the June 10 council meeting. Her recommendation was to have three council members, three fire personnel and three community members on the committee.
