Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
Chicago Ridge and Oak Lawn have agreed to end their yearlong experiment in sharing a fire chief.
After Chicago Ridge hires a full-time chief, George Sheets will return to only running the Oak Lawn Fire Department. Sheets said he asked to be relieved so he could focus solely on being Oak Lawn’s chief, a position he has held for six years.
Chicago Ridge Mayor Chuck Tokar said the village will miss Sheets, but “he said he won’t leave until we find a suitable replacement, even if that takes three or six months.” … and the unusual arrangement of towns sharing a fire chief “was going well and I wish we could continue it.” But the pressures of running two fire departments is demanding.
Sheets has held both positions during the past year, spending roughly two days in Chicago Ridge each week. He replaced Robert Muszynski, who resigned in 2014 citing personal differences with some village officials, specifically Tokar, over possible changes to the fire department.
At the time, Tokar wanted to reopen the firehouse at 107th Street and Lombard Avenue without hiring the seven to eight firefighters that Muszynski said were needed to staff it. The station was reopened by using part-timers. An ad running on the website of the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association praises Sheets’ accomplishments in Chicago Ridge — including reopening the fire station and reducing personnel costs — and says the new chief’s salary will be negotiated based upon experience.
Besides getting the long-closed station reopened, Sheets started a part-time firefighter program that now has 11 members and will likely expand to about 15. He said the part-timers allow Chicago Ridge to have six firefighters on duty each shift, more than in the past, and the process is working well. Now, the station at 107th and Lombard is only open 12 hours a day but will go to 24 hours by August, he said.
Chicago Ridge had been paying one-third of Sheets’ salary, or $37,695, under an agreement between the two village boards last July.
Chicago Ridge has 13 full-time firefighters and 23 either part-time or paid-on-call firefighters. The fire department budget is $2.7 million for fiscal 2015, and the department answers about 2,600 calls annually … most of those are medical in nature.
Oak Lawn Mayor Sandra Bury said neither she nor the trustees demanded that Sheets return to full-time duty there. “No, no, no,” she said. “Everyone benefits from shared resources.”
thanks Dan
