Former C.R. fire chief cites frustrations for leaving

Departed Fire Chief Stephen Reid, who abruptly “retired” Wednesday without notice, says he left for good reasons.

Reid, 59, said on Monday that he decided to call it quits after just nine months on the job because the City Council and City Manager Jeff Pomeranz were not supporting the day-to-day operation of the Fire Department in the way that he had wanted for training, equipment purchases and college tuition reimbursement for firefighters.

At one point in Monday's interview, Reid played off the city of Cedar Rapids' moniker, the City of Five Seasons, and said Cedar Rapids was the city of five letters when it came to supporting fundamental needs of its firefighters - “C.H.E.A.P.”

“I grew up as a firefighter,” said Reid, who had been deputy chief of emergency medical services in Washington, D.C. and a private consultant in Maryland before assuming the Cedar Rapids' post of fire chief on May 10. “I was working to make things better for

Cedar Rapids' firefighters, safer for them.”

In his time at the Fire Department helm, he said he had only a couple one-to-one sessions with Pomeranz and never had one with Mayor Ron Corbett.

Pomeranz last night said Reid asked for more than the city, which he said is in a “strained” fiscal situation, could afford.

“It wasn't like his requests were ignored,” the city manager said. “It just takes time to get there.”

In the current budget year, Reid said the city has budgeted just $17,600 for the training of 140-plus Fire Department employees or about $117 an employee. The city's Information Technology Department, by comparison, has $2,450 per employee for training, he said.

Reid said he sought to boost the Fire Department's training budget to $400,000 a year for the budget year beginning July 1, but only got $40,000, he said.

“Our training budget was horrific,” he said.

Pomeranz said the Fire Department got more than it has had for training and more than it has had to pay overtime for firefighters.

There was also a disagreement over fire equipment. Reid said he lobbied for funding in the next budget year for a new ladder truck to replace one that is 17 to 18 years old. However, he got funds for a much-less expensive pumper truck instead, funds that had been taken out of the current-year's budget, he added.

“We couldn't afford it,” the city manager said of the ladder truck.

The former fire chief said, too, that he had become frustrated with a few of his fellow department heads for their lack of support on two issues - reimbursement for tuition expenses for employees and the installation of sprinkler systems in new homes.

He said the city currently is willing to reimburse firefighters and other city employees for 60 percent of the cost of college-course tuition, and he suggested that the city up the reimbursement to 100 percent for those who got an A in a course, 90 percent for those who got Bs, 80 percent for Cs and nothing for grades below that. The idea was shot down as too costly.

The residential sprinkler issue is a hot-button topic because mandated residential sprinkler systems in new construction add to the cost of new homes. Nonetheless, Reid said he is an advocate of the systems, and he suggested that the city experiment with them by requiring their use in new homes that are to be built in the city's flood-damaged neighborhoods with the help of federal funds. The idea was shot down, too.

Reid said the City Council and city manager talked about the value of having department directors work as a team, but he said he had been “raked over the coals” at director meetings for his ideas.

The “last straw” for him came at a City Hall strategic planning meeting on Feb. 11 in which

he said Pomeranz encouraged department directors to “be nice and

positive,” and then,

“all of a sudden he launches about, ‘If you're not happy here, just get out.'?”

“And the eye contact was dead on me,” Reid said. “I felt very threatened, very intimidated.”

Pomeranz last night rejected Reid's version of that part of the meeting, and he said he never intentionally looked at any particular employee and never told anyone to get out. At the same time, he did suggest that the department heads needed to work as a team to contain spending and that anyone unhappy with that should consider leaving.

Over his nine months, Reid acknowledged that the city and Fire Department have assembled funding to build a new central fire station to replace the one destroyed by the 2008 flood and to build a new district fire station on the city's west side to replace one that will close on the east side when the new central fire station opens there.

Reid came to the city from his private consulting firm and now has returned there in Myersville, Md.