By Mike Grogan
The Ledger
DAVENPORT, Fla. — City commissioners have refused to get in the middle of a major rift between the city’s volunteer firefighters and its new fire administrator over the suspension of the volunteer fire chief.
Chief Don Pelt appeared at Monday night’s City Commission meeting to ask the commissioners and City Manager Amy Arrington for a vote of confidence in response to the appeal he filed concerning his suspension Nov. 16 by Fire Administrator Stuart McCutcheon.
McCutcheon was not at the meeting.
But Mayor Pete Rust and the commissioners said they would leave it up to Arrington to work out the situation.
“I’d like to urge the city manager to get the problem with the Fire Department solved,” Commissioner H.B. Robinson III, said.
McCutcheon was hired by Arrington on Oct. 16 after the first person she hired for the part-time position quit after just two days on the job.
He suspended Pelt after the chief answered a call at the Davenport School of the Arts on Nov. 14, during the city’s annual Quilt and Tea Festival.
Pelt, who was off duty at the time, said he responded even though he was off duty because the city’s on-duty firefighters were in Haines City for training and the firehouse was locked.
At the school, Pelt administered first aid to a woman who had fallen on a carpeted ramp and sustained some minor abrasions to her face, right arm and right knee.
When the woman, who is a nurse, told Pelt she did not require further medical treatment, he canceled the call for an ambulance.
In the notification of suspension McCutcheon sent to Pelt, there was no reason given for the action other than that the incident at the school was under investigation.
It stated that Pelt “shall not enter City of Davenport Fire Department property without expressed wriden (sic) consent.”
When Pelt asked for clarification from the commission on why he was being suspended he was told by City Attorney Kirk Warren that they could not discuss the issue because it was under investigation.
Several of the Fire Department’s 19 volunteer firefighters were on hand to lend support to Pelt.
Among them was Fred Stewart, a full-time firefighter/ paramedic in Lakeland who lives in Davenport and volunteers on his days off. He was one of four volunteers who had applied for the fire administrator job.
Stewart said he believes the Pelt question was a side issue and Arrington was looking for reasons to turn the Fire Department over to the Polk County Fire Service to save money.
“She wants to be the martyr that saved the city $190,000 a year,” he charged.
Arrington denied that charge.
“Absolutely not,” she said and pointed out that city commissioners voted 3-2 in February not to turn the department over to the county and it is her job to see that the commissions wishes are carried out.
Copyright 2009 Lakeland Ledger Publishing Corporation