By: Diane Benjamin
Last night a special meeting of the Downs Fire Protection District was held. I attended and filmed the entire 1 1/2 hours.
The meeting turned into a Public Comment session. That wasn’t a bad thing, a dialogue took place that needed to take place.
I am convinced the firing of the former Chief had nothing to do with Board members wanting to promote their children within the department. It did have everything to do with employee problems and concerns over working with the former Chief and not being heard by the then Board.
The meeting closed with a department employee presenting Board Chair Mark Casada with a letter signed by 10 of 13 employees, all of them not in leadership of the department, asking the Board not to consider re-hiring the former Chief.
One meeting is not going to fix the problems in the department but it allowed people who felt they haven’t been heard to be heard. The new appointed Trustee, Jeff Clark, was present, I’m sure he didn’t realize what he was walking into. He handled it well though.
It’s going to take a long time to upload that much video. It will be posted in 3 parts. Stay tuned.
Where are you going to upload it to? What a lot of people don’t know is jeff Clark is Marks neighbor and is friends with mike and mark. I know for a fact if they bring mike back 7 or 8 of the fireman are going to quit if not more.
The first two are posted on BlnNews.com. The third one is still uploading – 2 1/2 hours to go.
Jeff doesn’t know Mike at all…
I am glad to hear this, his impartiality will bring a much needed perspective change.