Bloomington fire chief resigns days after being tapped for service by mayor-elect: Next steps?
Last week on Friday (Dec. 1), Bloomington mayor-elect Kerry Thomson announced several of her picks for the department heads who would be a part of her administration, after she is sworn into office on Jan. 1.
Among Thomson’s announced choices was Jason Moore as fire chief—which meant he would continue to head up the city’s fire department as he has since mid-2016, after being appointed by then-mayor John Hamilton.
But early this week, Moore sent his resignation letter to Hamilton, who just over three weeks from now will be wrapping up two four-year terms. Both Hamilton and Thomson are Democrats. Hamilton did not seek re-election.
Moore sent a separate message about his resignation to firefighters and staff in the fire department.
What happens next? Responding to an emailed question from The B Square, Thomson wrote: “I will be naming an interim chief and conducting a search for our next chief.”
[Updated on Dec. 7, 2023 at 12:15 p.m. In a news release around noon on Thursday (Dec. 7), Thomson has announced her pick as interim fire chief: Roger Kerr. He is described in the news release like this: “Kerr, who has been with the department since 1988, previously served as its chief from 2008 to 2014. A current battalion chief, Kerr has held the rank of fire fighter, engineer, ariel technician and captain over his career. He will assume the position on January 1, 2024.” ]
How did the curious series of events arise, that saw Moore resigning just days after a news release from Thomson’s campaign? That’s not clear.
Responding to a B Square question, Thomson wrote that in October she had interviewed Moore in person, like she had all the other department heads.
Asked if she had told Moore ahead of the Dec. 1 announcement that she wanted to re-appoint him as fire chief, Thomson indicated that she met with Moore in person on Nov. 8. (That was the day after the election, which Thomson won—she was unopposed on the ballot. She had prevailed in a three-way Democratic Party primary.)
Thomson wrote that during the Nov. 8 meeting, “I let him know of my intention to re-appoint him. An appointment he accepted.”
In the resignation letters that Moore sent to the mayor and department staff, a similar sentiment appears in slightly different contexts. There’s an implication that Moore does not appear to think that he and Thomson are perfectly aligned in their ideas about the future of fire protection in Bloomington.
In his letter to the mayor, Moore wrote, “Even though the mayor-elect has opted to re-appoint me as the fire chief, I believe the City and department deserve a leader who is in alignment with the future trajectory and vision of the new leadership.”
In his message to the fire department staff, Moore put it like this: “While I initially desired to be a 20-year chief, you deserve a leader who is in alignment with the future trajectory and vision of the new City leadership.”
Responding to an emailed question from The B Square, Moore wrote that he did not want to add anything about his decision to resign, beyond what he had written to the mayor and the fire department staff.
But Moore did seek to clarify some factors that were not reasons for his resignation. There had been some news accounts that “make it seem like I’m resigning over pay and staffing issues,” Moore wrote. But Moore continued, “That is not true.”
Moore added, “The union is renegotiating their pay in 2024 and has a substantial bonus to help with retention.” About current vacancies among firefighters, Moore wrote, “Currently we are short five positions and have six finalizing the hiring process to start mid-January. When I referred to staffing in my email to staff, it relates to the growth of the City, knowing our operational staffing hasn’t increased since 2000.”
Moore’s relationship with the fire union included some friction, which surfaced this past summer. Moore asked the city council to approve the addition of an assistant fire chief for operations, assigned to oversee operations—assessing safety risks to firefighters during structural fires, and administering the department’s health and safety program.
As part of the same request, Moore wanted the city council to approve the addition of three EMT positions. Responding to concerns voiced by the fire union Moore eventually supported a delay in adding those positions. The positions eventually were included in the 2024 budget that was approved by the council two months ago.
The B Square asked Thomson about some potential areas where Moore’s and her own vision for the future of the department might be misaligned: “[A]re you committed to the continued implementation of the Mobile Integrated Healthcare program? Are you committed to the provision of fire department administration facilities in Showers West? Are there other policy points you can point to that you’d consider to be key parts of the Thomson administration’s approach to fire protection?”
Thomson responded by writing: “Public safety remains a top priority for my administration, and providing the best systems approach for safety of all will be my goal in assessing both programs and infrastructure.”
Asked why she had chosen to re-appoint Moore, Thomson answered: “Chief Moore has been a dedicated public servant making needed improvements to the equipment and infrastructure of the department.”
If Thomson’s search for a permanent fire chief lands on a candidate who is not currently working in Bloomington’s department, then her pick would require approval from the city council. That’s because Indiana state law says that “A person appointed fire chief must have had at least five (5) years of continuous service with the department immediately before the fire chief’s appointment.”
But the state statute includes a way around that five-year requirement, which is for the city council to vote, by simple majority, to waive it.
That’s the way that Moore was appointed Bloomington’s fire chief—through the council’s action on May 4, 2016 to waive the statutory five-year requirement.
Based on the meeting minutes and the CATS recording of the May 4, 2016 meeting, the council’s vote to waive the statutory five-year requirement came a bit after 1 a.m.
It was then-deputy mayor Mick Renneisen who presented the case to the city council for Moore’s appointment.
Renneisen described the process that produced Moore as the selected candidate. It was a nationwide search that yielded 28 applications. Of those, 15 were selected for phone interviews. Based on the phone interviews, the 15 were winnowed down to seven, who were invited for a day-long assessment process that was conducted by a four-person team.
That four-person team consisted of: deputy mayor Mick Renneisen; then-director of human resources Caroline Shaw; communications director Mary Catherine Carmichael; and Mark Webb, a retired 35-year veteran of Bloomington’s fire department.
From the seven, three candidates were selected and forwarded to the mayor for a final interview.
The city council in 2016 consisted of: Chris Sturbaum, Dorothy Granger, Allison Chopra, Dave Rollo, Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Steve Volan, Susan Sandberg, Andy Ruff, and Timothy Mayer.
The vote to waive the five-year requirement, so that Moore could be appointed fire chief, was 8–0 with Granger abstaining.
