Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spokane’s five finalists for fire chief address long-term staffing, emergency readiness

Spokane Fire Chief candidates Jason Nicholl, center, and Tony Nielsen, right, engage in conversation with concerned citizens and firefighters during a public forum Thursday, May 11, 2017. The five candidates circulated through tables where they were peppered with questions about the the open position. Nicholl is from the Salt Lake City area and Nielsen is chief of Spokane Fire District 8. The other candidates are Helen Ahrens Byington, Andy Sannipoli and Brian Schaeffer. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)
By Nina Culver and Kip Hill The Spokesman-Review

The candidates vying to permanently replace longtime Spokane fire Chief Bobby Williams praised the department’s readiness to respond to emergencies in interviews Thursday, as each made their case to lead the agency’s 300 employees and oversee its $50 million budget.

The five applicants – four men and one woman –also heard questions and recommendations from panels of community leaders assembled by Mayor David Condon.

Helen Ahrens-Byington: Deep ties and working partnerships

Helen Ahrens-Byington, deputy fire chief of operations in the city of Kirkland, Washington, and a contender for the position, said she’s visited Spokane regularly during the past decade to visit family.

“It says a lot about a department when you’ve had a chief that has spent 28 years here,” Ahrens-Byington, 52, said, referring to the long tenure of former Chief Williams. “I think it says a lot about the community, the city and the department. Having somebody in here that long says a lot about the stability of working partnerships.”

Ahrens-Byington, who coordinated the development of a water rescue program for the Seattle suburb’s responses to Lake Washington, said she’d depend on the experience of trained technicians in the Spokane Fire Department to deal with rescues on the Spokane River, which require a different expertise.

“It sounds like they’ve been doing it with a good, qualified team, and as a chief, my role is to support that and make sure we have that ability,” she said.

Ahrens-Byington said she discussed the expiration of a federal grant to hire new firefighters with Mayor David Condon on Thursday morning.

That grant has allowed the department to retain nearly 50 new firefighters, but expires in two years.

Ahrens-Byington said she believed it was important to demonstrate the services offered by those new employees, and work with the administration and City Council to develop a plan to fund the positions permanently.

“I think that will be the big piece, to try to get that funding. Exact methods and steps about getting that done is going to be a partnership with council and finance,” she said.

Charles ‘Andy’ Sannipoli: Similar cities, similar threats

Charles “Andy” Sannipoli, assistant chief for administration and planning for the Durham, North Carolina, Fire Department, agreed that detailed information on the benefits of additional firefighters would help sell the public on paying for them after the grant expires.

“We’re adding all these individuals. Now quantify for me exactly what that’s getting me, for those dollar bills,” Sannipoli, 46, said. “I hope there’s a plan in place for that, but that’s something I’d start looking into, day one.”

Sannipoli said Durham, a city of roughly 251,000 people in central North Carolina, was very similar to Spokane in its current revitalization following the departure of the tobacco industry years ago. The departments both have similar staffing levels and numbers of stations, and use alternative response units to respond to less serious medical calls, a strategy Spokane began employing a few years ago.

“It’s been a great experience. They’ve taken a lot of load off the busier engine companies,” Sannipoli said.

Wildfires, such as 1991’s firestorm that scorched 100 homes and killed one resident, are not a concern in Durham, Sannipoli said, but he believed the department had personnel with experience to respond if another blaze threatened the city.

“One of the keys to being a leader of any organization, is being able to put a team together that can achieve the goal you need,” he said.

Brian Schaeffer: Bringing local knowledge to the job

Former Spokane Fire Department assistant fire chief and current acting fire Chief Brian Schaeffer, who is a candidate for the position, said he knows the department has issues to address, including diversity. “We recognize that and we’re working on it,” he said.

Instead of offering its own test once every two years, the department now uses a new test that is standard all over the country and can be taken anywhere, anytime. The department recently hired a female firefighter from the Washington, D.C., area using the new system and also has a new recruiter who is a woman.

“We’re recruiting all the time,” he said.

Schaeffer believes a strong knowledge of wildland fires is essential for the job as fire chief in Spokane. There are fires every summer on Beacon Hill and some neighborhoods like Indian Trail are particularly susceptible to fire.

“There’s ladder fuel all throughout southwest Spokane,” he said. “It happens every year.”

“Spokane is a unique community,” he said. “I’ve spent the last 12 years building relationships and proving myself to the community. There are times in organizational dynamics when you do want to bring in a change agent. We’re certainly not there.”

Schaeffer has been a firefighter since 1989 and said his goal has always been to become a fire chief. If he’s not selected for the position, Schaeffer said he plans to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

“When you bring in someone from the outside, they will want to set their own path and bring in their own team,” he said. “I don’t want to be an impediment to that. It’s just not fair to that person coming in.”

“My life is about service. I’d like it to be here.”

Tony Nielsen: On the front lines of fire control

Tony Nielsen, the 49-year-old chief of Spokane County Fire District 8, will be entering his 15th wildfire season working in the region. Last summer, he watched the Yale Road fire spread from District 3 into his 110-square mile area south of the city limits of Spokane and Spokane Valley.

Nielsen said the key to fighting any potential wildfires near the city is making sure the department has the necessary equipment and agreements with other agencies to battle them. He remembered fighting the Valley View fire, a July 2008 blaze that enveloped 11 homes and cost $3 million to suppress.

“We even had added staff that day. That fire wasn’t going to stop,” Nielsen said.

Agreements with agencies like the Department of Natural Resources allow quick deployment of aircraft, which Nielsen said was most important in saving homes.

Retaining the firefighters hired under the federal grant should be one of the department’s “top priorities,” Nielsen said, and he suggested a few ways the city might raise money to cover their salaries, including advocating for a larger share of the city’s state tax contributions on the sale of legalized marijuana.

He said Spokane could also look at participating in a state program that compensates cities for emergency ground responses through Medicaid, but wasn’t sure if that would be enough money to cover annual salary costs.

A native of the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, Nielsen said he already had a knowledge of how the department worked and the personalities in it based on his work for District 8.

Jason Nicholl:

‘We are constantly rolling’

Jason Nicholl, 44, is the South Salt Lake Fire Department’s medical division battalion chief. The department has three stations and an annual budget of $8 million. But his department also responds to more calls per capita than any other department in Utah, he said.

“It’s a tough area,” he said. “We are constantly rolling.”

He said his department applied for the same grant Spokane got in 2009, but then turned it down after they determined it didn’t make good financial sense.

“It’s ongoing money spent in the wrong place,” he said. “It’s not spending the public’s money wisely.”

The Spokane Fire Department will have to spend $18 million for the new firefighters over the three years of the grant and the fourth year it is required to keep all the new firefighters on staff. Still, Nicholl said he’s committed to finding another way to pay to keep the firefighters on staff.

“The city is committed to the grant,” he said. “We’d have to find a way to fund it.”

Nicholl, a ninth generation firefighter, said he’s never been a wildland firefighter, since the forested areas around his town are National Forest Service land. “We provide resource assistance,” he said. “It’s not my level of expertise, but I know how to leverage the expertise of others.”

If hired, Nicholl said he wants to address the lack of diversity in the department, including the very low number of female firefighters. The department also has long response times that need to be addressed, he said.

“I think they’re well outside of nationally accepted standards,” he said.

Nicholl likes the department’s use of ARU units staffed by paramedics to handle medical calls, but said more is needed to address the needs of the community. Other agencies, including the police department, detox services and social service agencies need to work together. “I think it’s a good first step,” he said. “It is not a solution. You have to be able to address all the vulnerable populations.”