Chelan Fire Commissioners start talks on fire chief replacement process

CHELAN – Lake Chelan School District (LCSD) Superintendent Barry DePaoli visited the Chelan Fire and Rescue Commissioners during their regular meeting on March 20 and presented them with information on the LCSD 2019 Bond.

DePaoli went over the projects the bond would include and the costs of each. “It’s a $75.5 million proposal ... pretty bulk vision and I would say to you that leadership is about bulk visions ... we have lots of buildings that are outdated and need to change so our kids, our teachers, and our community are moving towards the 21st century,” DePaoli explained to the commissioners.

The LCSD Superintendent mentioned the fact that there have been a lot of comments from people on the radio regarding school enrollment. “I want to address that,” he said. “The comment is that we have no growth in enrollment,” added DePaoli, before going into some statistics. From 2003 to 2019 LCSD had an upward trend. According to DePaoli, they were “up as high as 1,430” students. However, in 2016 enrollment dropped by 35 to 40 kids, “but you have to remember we are already overcrowded,” DePaoli stated.  

Based on the State mandate, kindergarten to third-grade classrooms need to have less than 17 kids in them. “After 17, we need another classroom. Enrollment is deceptive,” said DePaoli.

Taxpayers will be looking at an increase of .86¢ per thousand in 2020 and .76¢  in 2021. “I do not think it is an unreasonable ask for the next 30 years,” stated DePaoli as he went over the bond and the tax rates.

After hearing from DePaoli, the commissioners moved on to regular business for the meeting. Commissioner Russ Jones informed that the rescue boat’s engines are on their way from Michigan. “They have never been in salt water before. They ran them and they did a compression check and everything else on them, so they are good to go,” he said.  The shipping costs ended up being higher than predicted, so Jones had to “roll out a check for that.” Fire Chief Tim Lemon said that a couple surplus radios from Orondo will be acquired for the boat at no cost.

Commissioners began a conversation on the replacement for the Fire Chief. “We have two approaches, evaluating internal candidates and our open testing,” said Chief Lemon. In order to conduct the open testing, Chelan Fire and Rescue would need to contract with a firm that specializes in executive recruitment. Lemon mentioned that Prothman out of Issaquah charges between $17,000 to $24,000 and ESCI out of Portland, Oregon averages between $12,000 to $20,000.

“Those are huge numbers,” said Commissioner Phil Moller, “I wasn’t expecting to see those kinds of numbers for that,” he added. He suggested to the other two commissioners to chat about hiring someone internally instead of “spending these kinds of monies.”

If the commissioners were to hire someone internally, they would need to conduct interviews with the candidates and then collectively decide on one. “Externally, you typically want to have a four-month window, so you have one to two months of advertising and at least two weeks to a month of deliberation,” stated Lemon. To him, it makes more sense financially to hire someone who is already part of the fire district.

Commissioner Jay Witherbee mentioned that somewhere along the hiring process he would like to receive feedback from the community and the rest of CFR staff regarding the fire chief candidates. The commissioners are in no rush, but they need to make a decision as to where they should go next. Commissioners agreed to continue with the discussion during the Long Range Planning meeting scheduled for March 28 at 11 a.m.

The next regular commission meeting will be on April 17, 3 p.m. at the fire hall located at 232 E. Wapato Avenue.