Fire Chief Recruitment

In a comprehensive effort to evaluate innovative and fiscally more efficient operating structures for our municipal fire and ambulance service, the City Council voted unanimously to give direction to the Interim City Administrator on September 15, 2020, to pursue an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with Jackson County Fire Districts. This included the yes vote of Mayor Akins in her previous role of councilor.

This course of action unfolded with a series of professional meetings between COA administrative staff, Ashland Fire and Rescue staff, Ashland Firefighters’ Association, and eventually Fire District #3. The process was reviewed and affirmed with no serious dissent by City Council on November 2, including identification of the final candidate. Negotiations were concluded with mutual satisfaction; final contracts were drafted for presentation to the authorizing boards and councils and Ashland City Councilors were invited to interview the candidate via Zoom.  The IGA contract was placed on the consent agenda for approval on the evening of November 17, 2020.

Then Mayor-elect Akins attended the first 10 minutes or so of the interview slot with the candidate that Councilor Jensen also attended. Mayor Akins asked the applicant to name his current salary and then left the Zoom meeting. Mayor-elect Akins subsequently posted the applicant’s current salary on Facebook with comments that were repeatedly misleading.

(Mayor Akins posted on FaceBook Nov 17)

“The current applicant makes $120,00.  My guess: he’d have been interested for less than $225,000.”

This statement is patently dishonest because it compares the fully loaded salary of $225,000 to the base salary of $120,000 implying to constituents that City negotiators were grossly overpaying for this position.

On the same day, Mayor-elect Akins doubled-down on the above dishonesty by stating on FB.  “So we have a rented fire chief. The proposed person has three years experience and we are starting him at $225,000. Doesn’t that seem high to you?” This language continues to mislead by implying that the applicant’s base salary would be $225, 000 and that he was not well-qualified for the position.

The applicant, upon learning of this dishonest social media traffic, inappropriate behavior of Ashland’s Mayor-elect, and the toxic atmosphere around this topic, withdrew his name from consideration within hours.

The following is a sentence from a letter that was submitted by our local Firefighter’s Union on this issue.

“Sadly, one of our City Councilors decided to undermine these efforts. Councilor Akins took it upon herself to post misinformation, half-truths and inaccurate figures involving the new Chief’s compensation package and terms of employment.”

These actions on the part of Mayor-elect Akins are not only dishonest, they are not responsible municipal governance. Mayor Akins had several opportunities within public council meetings to express any concerns she might have had with the path being proposed by staff for filling our Fire Chief position. She chose not to use them and instead spoke inappropriately about a candidate and disseminated misleading information on social media.

This behavior destroyed an effort that had been months in development and for which staff had asked for and received Council support. It also damaged the reputation of our community and staff and seriously jeopardized our emergency preparedness in the months to come wherein we had two more candidates withdraw from consideration for our Interim Fire Chief position.