By Anne M. Amato
Connecticut Post Online (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
SHELTON, Conn. - Fire Chief John Millo is back at the helm of the city’s 237-member volunteer fire department. But then, many say, he was never really gone.
An ongoing dispute between the Board of Fire Commissioners and Mayor Mark A. Lauretti over the fire chief’s job description made Millo’s role with the department unclear. “It’s gone around and around who is chief and who is not chief,” Commissioner Justin Sabatino said last week before making a motion to appointMillo temporary chief.
Millo, the fire chief for eight years, had been serving as acting chief since his most recent two-year term expired on June 30; he had planned to stay on until his replacement was chosen.
But the board, in a Sept. 7 memo, told Millo, as well as all four fire companies, that he was no longer chief after Lauretti refused to approve its selection of Deputy Chief Mike Ulrich as Millo’s replacement.
“I just think the commission went above the scope of its authority and obviously left doubts in the minds of some of the firefighters,” Millo said last week. “I was never not officially the chief. I still fulfilled my duties administratively and monitored all fire calls.”
Lauretti agrees.
“He was always the chief, only the commission didn’t want to recognize him,” the mayor said. “It was wrong and derisive to send out memos to the rank and file to the contrary."Meanwhile, the challenge of selecting a new chief remains.
In August, Lauretti refused to approve a new chief until changes were made to the position’s job description. The mayor said he asked for this before the board selected Ulrich.
In particular, Lauretti wants the chief to be able to run the department’s day-to-day operations without interference from the fire commissioners.
The board last month initially agreed to job description changes that included this provision but later rescinded the modifications.
“All of us sat in the room and went over the changes and then one [person], who was the author of it, votes against it,” the mayor said, referring to board member Bruce Kosowsky. “It’s bewildering.”
Kosowsky could not be reached for comment.
Lauretti refused to call the matter a feud, or tug of war, between him and the fire board, but he did say it was personal.
“From where I stand, it’s all about the commission,” he said. “It’s all personal. I refuse to forfeit my responsibility under public safety because a couple of people on the commission don’t like me.”
The mayor said if the fire board doesn’t want the chief to run the department, “then don’t have a chief.”
Lauretti added, “The ball is in their court now.”
The board continues to work on getting a new job description in place.
A draft of a new description has been formulated, but still needs to be tweaked, said Board of Fire Commissioners Chairman Robert Araujo.
Sabatino agrees.
He said the board is in agreement on certain items, but the job description still needs some work.
“We took out some of the redundancy and fine-tuned the job description,” he said. A problem, he said, is leaving the chief alone to do his job.
“Some of the commission members want to oversee everything he does,” Sabatino said.
Jack Finn, D-1, a member of the Board of Aldermen’s Public Health & Safety Committee, said he thinks the issue has dragged on long enough.
“One thing we have to be thankful for is that even with four volunteer companies and some confusion, the job has been getting done,” he said. While there’s been no problems at any fire scenes since the dispute started, Finn said the leadership issue has become a concern to him.
He said Millo’s reappointment last Tuesday was a good first step.
“I knew they didn’t have the ability to remove me,” Millo said of the fire board members. “It has to be for a just cause and it appears they don’t have that.”