By Jake Sheridan
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Chicago Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt will retire in May, leaving whoever wins the city’s next mayoral election the task of picking a new Fire Department leader.
Nance-Holt told aldermen she will be forced to step back by department rules when she turns 63 next year. The mandatory retirement will end a six-year tenure for the city’s first Black woman to serve in the role, appointed by Lori Lightfoot in 2021 — and one thing will stick most on her mind when she leaves, she said.
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“The commitment of the Chicago firefighters and paramedics and how they go out there every day,” she told reporters after her department’s City Council 2027 budget hearing. “Despite sometimes the hurt, the pain, the loss, how they just go out there, and they continue giving their all.”
Throughout the hearing, Nance-Holt praised Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration for using bond revenue to restore the city’s aging fleet of fire trucks and ambulances, but warned an influx of bike lanes sometimes creates challenges for first responders. She also highlighted the need to recruit more paramedics and expand the department’s training staff as top priorities.
Several aldermen raised concerns about recent service downgrades shifting advanced units in their wards to more basic services. Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th, said downgrades have “exploded” in recent weeks, while Ald. Debra Silverstein , 50th, warned a fifth of the city’s fire trucks were downgraded on Halloween. The downgrades, a product of the city having insufficient personnel, shifted “advanced” teams offering the highest levels of life support to “basic” level.
Nance-Holt pinned the surge last weekend on typical difficulties staffing weekends and holidays. And while she argued the department balances the decreased services so neighborhoods across Chicago get the emergency responses they need, she warned the department must counter a national paramedic shortage exacerbated by a union arbitration decision further decreasing the city’s paramedic ranks.
“I want to tell you my hands are tied with this,” she said. “It needs to be dealt with.”
Johnson’s top labor relations leaders must negotiate with the city’s rank-and-file firefighters union and the department should add a dedicated recruitment team, she said.
Nance-Holt also warned aldermen the city must invest more in training within the department. While New York City has 250 fire academy instructors, Chicago’s department has only four dedicated instructors, she said.
“It’s clear to me and to many of us in this room that we are woefully inadequate in training,” O’Shea told her after sharing his condolences after a Thursday morning fire in Rogers Park killed four people. “And I say that because I’ve spent far too many nights in funeral homes.”
After warning last year the city’s fleet of fire trucks and ambulances was becoming increasingly outdated, Nance-Holt praised Johnson’s decision to use bond revenues to purchase new equipment. She listed off dozens of new vehicles coming to the city soon, including 42 fire engines, 38 trucks, 40 ambulances and two tower ladders.
Because of the size of the purchase, made possible through around $120 million spent over two years, the city has a dedicated manufacturing line for the vehicles, making them cheaper and quicker to make, she said.
“So we are in a much better environment now than we have been, but that’s not without saying that every year we need it,” she said.
But while Nance-Holt praised the Johnson administration’s decision to spend big on fire department infrastructure, she noted concerns with its rollout of bike lanes across the city. One recent bump-out blocked trucks at a Mount Greenwood fire station from coming and going, and road changes sometimes block access to fire hydrants or add traffic that slows down large first-responder vehicles.
“We agree with pedestrian and bike lanes… but when we add these things, it changes our tactics. It changes how we respond. Response times are going up, number one, because we have restricted lane usage,” she said. “It sounds really good, but we’re not thinking about the whole picture, and we have to think about how long is it going to take the Fire Department to respond.”
She called on the Chicago Department of Transportation and aldermen making road changes to better communicate with her department.
After the hearing, Nance-Holt told reporters she is not sure what she will do after leaving the department. She is most proud of her efforts to expand the department’s community engagement, an effort she said will show up as “energized” Chicagoans take the department’s next entrance exam.
The next commissioner to helm the department must focus on making sure the city has more than four permanent training instructors after decades of City Hall budget cuts trimmed the fire academy, she said.
“I’m not greedy,” she said. “If we could start with 10, at least get 10 there, where we could do ongoing training and help them develop more training.”
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