http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/local/scn-gt-chief3jan16,0,7318253.story?coll=green-news-local-headlines
By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer
January 16, 2005
Among the challenges facing his successor, Fire Chief Daniel Warzoha said last week, will be gaining the trust of both career and volunteer firefighters.
"Whoever becomes chief of this department has an exceptionally complex task ahead
of them," Warzoha said. "You have to have cooperation be-tween the career and volunteer forces and build a level of trust in all the agencies, boards, and commissions which run the town of Greenwich."
First Selectman Jim Lash this week he will begin a national search for a fire chief to run
the department. Warzoha an-nounced last week that he plans to retire June 30 .
Warzoha's departure comes after a year in which Greenwich Firefighters Local 1042 asked the town to investigate whether Warzoha was impaired by alcohol while in command at a Dec. 5, 2003, fire that left three firefighters seriously injured and then called for his resignation.
A town investigation exonerated Warzoha, who after retirement, will work on a contract basis as the town's emergency operations management coordinator.
While Warzoha, 53, denied that recent difficulties with the firefighters' union hastened his retirement, the chief's two predecessors both have said the rivalry between career and volunteer firefighters makes it difficult to run the department.
"I think unfortunately as we look back, and to my successors down the line to the present day, that stigma has remained," former Chief John Titsworth said. "It was always that way and it's a very difficult situation."
The town's 97 career firefighters and some 200 active volunteers often work closely fighting fires, but over the years the two sides have struggled with distrust and resentment as their roles have changed.
As the full-time career contingent has grown, those firefighters have taken over a larger share of day-to-day firefighting duties, a responsibility once handled mainly by volunteers who lived and worked locally, including many small-business owners and tradesmen. Volunteers who train diligently and respond to calls regularly are indignant at the notion that career firefighters should assume all duties.
The town's volunteer fire departments have their own chiefs and rank structure. Volunteers must meet some of the same minimum training and fitness qualifications as career firefighters, who are sometimes ambivalent about taking orders from part-time volunteers.
Occasional altercations and controversies between the two sides have reinforced firefighters' sense of loyalty to their own.
Former First Selectman Tom Ragland, who appointed Warzoha chief in 1999, said the chief began the job with strong support from both career and volunteer firefighters, based on his employment with the town's sewer department and 30 years as a volunteer firefighter, culminating in his leadership of the Glenville Volunteer Fire Department.
"The career guys supported Danny because he was a union guy working in the sewer department, so it was a good thing politically from the career through to the volunteer," Ragland said.
Being a native and longtime employee of the town gave Warzoha a familiarity with many important town officials and being a known quantity helped when he lobbied for funds to hire 15 new firefighters, build the North Street firehouse and buy new fire trucks, Ragland said.
"That's a skill you either have or you don't, and Danny is a great salesman," Ragland said. "I'm sorry to see him step down because I thought he'd been a pretty fine chief."
Warzoha agreed that his long service with the town helped him get funds for projects.
"It comes from the people on various boards and agencies having a confidence level because they knew me from my work and what I had done," Warzoha said. "That's a big stumbling block for an outsider."
Titsworth said the end of his tenure was made difficult because career personnel questioned his loyalty to their ranks and approved a vote of no confidence against him in 1992, citing his failure to secure more overtime funds from the Board of Estimate and Taxation to avoid staff cuts because of budget constraints that year. To conserve funds, Titsworth opted not use overtime to fill vacancies when firefighters called in sick.
"The union felt I wasn't being supportive of their safety," Titsworth said. "I was just in a situation where we didn't have the money and we could've ended up with no fire protection if the money ran out. I was just in a situation where I had no money to spend."
Following Titsworth's retirement in August 1993, then-First Selectman John Margenot hired Utah firefighter Noel Padden, the first Greenwich fire chief selected from outside the department, because he felt he could stop the infighting.
Padden had previously been chief of the Roy, Utah, fire department, which had both career and volunteer firefighters.
Padden did not return messages for this article.
"At the time Noel Padden was the best fit," Margenot said. "There are strengths to bringing in an outsider, in that you cross-pollinate and get experience from a different culture."
Four years and several peacemaking initiatives later, Padden abruptly resigned, citing the difficulty in bridging the gaps between career and volunteer firefighters as a major factor in his decision.
"My role was becoming the central focus," Padden said at the time. "There are groups out there who don't like the direction I've taken and I was becoming the issue."
Margenot said that to some extent the fire chief can't expect the tensions between volunteer and career firefighters to disappear.
"You do have some innate conflicts because of the nature of volunteerism," he said. "If one group does it for a living, and the other does it for the love of the town, there can be problems."
Margenot said that while the volunteer ranks have surged in recent years, the overall decrease in their numbers -- linked to the increasing wealth of the town's population -- has changed the dynamic of the department.
Rising property values made it harder for many volunteers to remain in Greenwich, Margenot said.
"At the time there was a large number of volunteers. There were a lot more small business people who lived and worked here," Margenot said. "But that's kind of dried up."
To be successful, the next chief will have to garner feedback and support from the wider community to help bring about needed changes, Warzoha said.
"You need involvement in the community in arenas other than your discipline so you understand the broad spectrum of what the community wants," Warzoha said. "I will tell you, I feel strongly that the only way you as a senior manager get to know your community is by listening to what the constituents say."
Ragland said it is possible for a chief to have good relations with both volunteer and career firefighters because both Padden and Warzoha did for a while.
"You have to work to solidify the career and volunteers," Ragland said. "They have to realize they are a team and are there to fight fires."
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