By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Chiefland City Commissioners Monday were caught by surprise when they were told Fire Chief James Harris is retiring and plans to use his remaining leave time until he departs the city on Dec. 31.

            Harris assured commissioners in his Oct. 10 letter that he would still be doing all of his duties as a department head “including major incidents and administrative requirements as I have always done,” but his bosses weren’t confident he would be on duty full-time.

            While they accepted his retirement and said his leave time would be honored, they didn’t want the fire department left without a full-time chief while Harris is using his remaining leave time.

            A.D. Goodman, who serves as assistant chief, offered to serve as interim chief to give the city plenty of time to take applications and select the fire chief they want for the top spot.

            Goodman made it clear he has a full-time job at Central Florida Electric Cooperative and has absolutely no desire to take on the position of fire chief but is willing to help out for as long as it takes a find a chief.

            “A lot of people approached me about it. I don’t think it needs to be a volunteer that takes this task on full-time. It really needs to be a full-time fire chief who is qualified to do the job,” Goodman said. “I want to make sure you guys have plenty of time to select and interview the best person for the job. We have some people in-house that are pretty capable of doing that job.  I think it needs to be something this board needs to take a deep breath, look at the big picture and make sure they have the right person. I have no problem filling that position until then.”

            Goodman said he talked to his wife about taking the interim chief position. He wanted her on board if he was asked to serve in that position. He said his immediate supervisor at the cooperative and the general manager had no objections to him taking on the job of interim chief until a permanent replacement is found.

            City Manager Laura Cain asked a big question, however.

            “So, my question, the chief has given us his December 31 letter, so he’s still fire chief? He won’t be gone until December 31. We will have an interim fire chief. How does that work? So, James would no longer have to come in or touch base with us or anything like that? If he loses the fire chief’s responsibilities, would those duties be assumed by Mr. Goodman? I just want to make sure I’m on the same page,” Cain said.

            City Attorney Norm Fugate asked when Harris’ contract ends. The answer was February, but Fugate also wanted to know if all the leave time he was claiming had been calculated. The answer from Cain is that his leave is on the books and he’s entitled to the leave time.

            Fugate suggested holding off on any decisions at Monday’s board meeting and indicated the commission should assign Cain to the job of collecting all the information needed to make a decision as well as preparing to advertise the position of chief. She said she would bring everything back to the next meeting.

            Commissioner Norm Weaver said he spoke at length to Harris and learned his decision to give up firefighting was based on physical limitations.

            “Chief Harris – he’s been given information that he should not be working, he can’t climb the truck, can’t climb the ladder, that kind of stuff,” Weaver said.

            Mayor Chris Jones said he felt that the city needed someone to fill the position of fire chief because of the emergency nature of the job.

            “I think someone should hold that position in the interim as chief just with the emergencies and the experience needed for that position,” Jones said. “That’s solely my opinion. I think someone should be interim chief.”

            Fugate said the city needed to figure out who’s in charge.

            “If you know he’s not going to be present, you need to address the issue of who’s in charge,” Fugate said “That’s not an automatic thing, passing it to assistant chief, something like that. This is the first I’ve known of it, so I don’t have any comment on his eligibility for those things.”

             “He has plenty of sick leave on the books, and he’s trying to use his sick leave so he doesn’t lose any of his sick leave,” Cain said. ‘I think December 31 without someone regularly there at the station is a long time.”

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City of Chiefland Regular Meeting October 10, 2022; Posted October 11, 2022