2000-02-09 Charter Commission Minutes

Home

minutes 02-09-00Page 26 of 41 Chiefs and up, if they had 3 years, automatically they were qualified. I took it like it was a good thing, but then again, they were looking at a whole bunch of people who were applying. I think their list came down to, like, 16 candidates who qualified, and they interviewed them all, so it’s the pool. They have a larger pool. YUEN: Could I ask a question on this? There’s the Chief, then there’s a Assistant Chief, and then Battalion Chief, and then Captain? BEN: Correct. YUEN: And how many Battalion Chiefs are there? BEN: Three or four. YUEN: And then the Captains, do they all have some kind of supervisory responsibility over people? BEN: The Captains are the first line of supervision at the Fire Station, and you have, what they call, platoons. Each platoon works 24 hours. There’s three platoons at each station, and the Captain is the head of the platoon at that particular station. So every station has three Captains and we have 14 or 16 Fire stations. That’s the number of Captains we have out there. YUEN: See, my reading would be that somebody with three years as a Captain would have administrative experience. I think people would make the assumption that it was likely that you would be looking at a list of people in-house. I don’t know that you want to say that the Fire Commission, if they look in-house, is limited to three or four people, as to who the next Fire Chief can be. That would be pretty restrictive. RAY: That’s just looking on this island, right? I mean, you’re assuming that you’re going to hire somebody as Fire Chief - BEN: No, my concern is if the intent is to be able to allow Captains or other firefighters - There may be other firefighters that have administrative experience elsewhere that came here but they assumed the lower level role, but I thought the Commission would want to provide our own employees opportunity, and I just wanted to make sure that we don’t put language in there that would exclude them from being part of the pool. YUEN: You’re raising a good question, and I know that this did come up in ‘92, and that it is a gray area. My own read of it is that a Captain should qualify for administrative experience. It’s something that this Commission can look into further if you want to make it more clear so that there isn’t a problem in the future on that particular point. RAY: George. MARTIN: You bring up a real interesting point in the interpretation of whatever it is that we put forth to the voters. The voters vote on it. It now becomes part of the Charter. Interpretation of that - Chris, how are we going to deal with that, if, in fact, two years down the road, or three years down the road, it comes exactly to a situation as being mentioned here? I believe that everybody is in agreement that it is the Captain, and possibly even people below the Captain that may have had some, as you’re mentioning, administrative ability from some other place, and not necessarily in a Fire Department, but any department that we’re touching upon here. Like we make mention of Department of Parks and Rec, same thing, pretty much the same language, and if you have a working supervisor that has administrative ability, and demonstrates it well, what’s going to preclude them from taking that position, or being considered for it, if our interpretation is not being taken the way we interpreted it, or the way we intend it right here and now? RAY: Sue. IRVINE: I just wondered if it would make it quite a bit clearer if we did what Steve Bess suggested and say ‘and demonstrates the ability to work in an administrative capacity’. MARTIN: If that were to suffice, no problem I think, and I agree. But again, it still comes down to interpretation. RAY: How about ‘and has demonstrable administrative skills’? BESS: Wonderful. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 02-09-00.html7/1/2011