Fire Chief Havlik announces retirement effective March 1; his 11-year tenure replaced seven years of department turmoil

Fire Chief Steve Havlik will retire March 1 after what will be nearly 30 years at the Fire Department.

Havlik was an in-house assistant fire chief when then-Public Safety Commissioner Nancy Evans selected and the full City Council approved Havlik to head the Fire Department in November 1998.

Havlik filled a vacancy left when the prior fire chief, Brud Gorman, resigned in April 1998 for undisclosed reasons. The tenure of Gorman, who was hired from a department in New Hampshire seven years earlier, had been a stormy one, marred by labor issues that often spilled over into City Council meetings and occasionally wound up in court. Firefighters once signed a no-confidence petition against him, and some city residents had called for his firing.

Havlik's arrival changed all that.

In 2008, Havlik played a central role in the first two weeks of the city's flood disaster response, serving as incident commander from the metro area's Emergency Operations Center at Kirkwood Community College.

In recent years, Havlik stepped forward to head up City Hall's Urban Deer Task Force, which has put in place an annual bow hunt of deer in the city. Earlier attempts to institute a bow hunt had failed because of anti-hunt objectors.

The city will start its search for Havlik's successor in October.

Havlik, 58, currently earns $117,062 a year. He supervises 141 firefighters and four civilian employees, the city's Human Resources Department reports.