It’s time for a fire chief

To the Editor…

I’d like to commend the City of Maryville on the very nicely designed Public Safety Department building which is going to be an asset to this community for years to come.

However, every day as I pass by said new building, it nags me with some questions I’ve been asking myself for over 30 years.

First, were you aware that the “Public Safety” system is quite antiquated and has been cycling out of cities since the 1970’s? Also, were you aware that there are only five Public Safety Departments in all of Missouri?

Yes, Maryville is one of them.

How “progressive” of us.

Over half of the states and territories in the United States have zero. Of those states and territories that do, 19 of them have four PSD or less (many of them have just one).

Why are we spending so much time and money to reinforce such an antiquated system when there’s quite literally, no good reason? Half of the planet already believes Maryville to be a knuckle-dragging, backwoods hole. Why are we reinforcing this impression by using a public system that is so outdated?

For those in our community that are unaware, the majority of cities of Maryville’s size (or smaller/larger) have a separate leader in both the law enforcement and fire fields with the idea that each of those leaders will lead their people in the best possible way. They have a Police Chief and a Fire Chief.

On the other hand, with the Public Safety model, you have one director over both departments in which they share the director and some key employees including officers as firefighters.

In theory, it seems like a good way to save money as you share employees. However, thousands of towns have dropped this form of government as they have proven it does not work effectively. People are not being led efficiently and departments instead lack.

This configuration was more widely popular in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States, but has since gone out of style because relatively few cities have been able to execute it successfully because of manpower limitations in handling major incidents.

Generally, in Maryville’s past, this position of Director has been filled by a person in the field of law enforcement, and never in fire. This leaves a void in leadership in the fire division since the person “in charge” is not really a firefighter. This person is a law enforcement officer.

For 30+ years the city has had a person more than qualified to be a Fire chief in Maryville. He’s been more loyal to the city than I dare say that they have been loyal to him. It seems a shame that the city continues to overlook the potential leadership of their current employees to “save” a couple dollars? To be honest, it’s really not been proven to me (or most) that this actually saves any money or makes us any safer. If anything it’s a detriment to our own safety. Who do you want to show up when your house is on fire? A professional firefighter(s) or a cop who sometimes goes to fire training?

There’s no better time than right now to switch to the two separate departments and be more progressive. There is a beautiful new facility, Director Woods has retired, there’s now a unified 911 system with the county (which is being progressive, thank you). Even the building is separated into two parts which would make it easier to manage each department effectively. And frankly, is it going to cost that much more to give the current leader of the fire division the title he could have easily earned over 25 years ago?

Hiring of a new Chief of Police would probably actually cost the city less in the long run. Less training “to be a firefighter”, less equipment, less time spent working on governing a body that they don’t even understand, learning new systems and policies, etc

Or are we looking to wait until Maryville is the very last public safety department in the entire state before we decide that maybe it really doesn’t work? I guess it’s just easier to continue to do what we’ve always done without looking forward… or worse, backwards.

I fear if it isn’t done now, it won’t happen until the next “new building” is built and I’m guessing that will be 50-60 years from now.

Maybe it’s time that Maryville actually starts being more progressive like they claim to be.

––Lana Cease

local business owner and a resident of this town/county since 1988.