The Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District announced today to its staff that they have hired a new Deputy Chief of Operations. Kurt Henke, formally of Vallejo Fire Department, will be taking the position upon the retirement of current Deputy Chief Geoff Miller. According to the bulletin distributed to Metro Fire personnel, Chief Henke was an assistant chief at Vallejo Fire with 25 years of experience.
According to the IAFF Local 1186 website, Chief Henke is the executive board president for this local. Chief Henke has been very involved in fighting the City of Vallejo bankruptcy proceedings.
Further information will be posted as it becomes available.
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It is a very bad day for Metro Fire. This comes on the heels of promoting the new Chief Deputy, Bill Sponable, who will assume the title of Chief in January. Sponable was a station Captain who was promoted to Finance Director 3 years ago. Just before the Chief's recruitment his title changed to Finance Chief so he would be eligible to participate in the process. He is not qualified.
ReplyDeleteMetro has several well qualified Fire Officers who would do well as Operations Deputy Chief. Apparently Sponable and the Board of Directors feel more comfortable with more IAFF "leadership".
So we promote the unqualified and don't promote the qualified.
Metro is in trouble. The Board was put in by IAFF Local 522 and is unbalanced. There is no longer a checks and balances system to prevent corrupt behavior and processes from flourishing. Now the senior Fire Officer positions are even more skewed to IAFF than under the outgoing administration of Don Mette (a Battalion Chief who was put in the Chief's job by IAFF Local 522).
All I see is cronyism.
An aside: I happened upon "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" on cable last night. It was quite motivational. The next Metro Board Meeting should be interesting...
-- Metro Fire Captain --