By Nancy A. Fischer
The Buffalo News
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — The mayor has fired embattled Fire Chief Roger Melchior after The Buffalo News asked about a series of messages posted on an online forum, including one that used the words “camel jockeys.”
Late last week, Melchior denied to a reporter — then to city officials — that he posted any messages on the forum used by firefighters in Baltimore, where he once worked, and said that someone must have been posting them under his name.
Falls Mayor Paul A. Dyster and other city leaders, however, concluded that because some of the posts contained information about meetings and other events in the Falls that were known only to a small number of people, Melchior was misleading them.
“There were two separate issues,” Dyster said Tuesday. “What comments were posted, and did he own up to posting them? He did not.”
City Council members were told of the firing following a Council meeting Monday night, after Melchior had been notified.
“I believe since he embarrassed the City of Niagara Falls with his racial comments that panned out to be true, the mayor did the right thing in terminating him,” City Council Chairman Samuel Fruscione said Tuesday.
Firefighters were told of the firing Tuesday morning, and Dyster met with six battalion chiefs, who now will rotate in the fire chief’s job for at least the next 60 days as a new search begins for the department’s top officer.
Dyster said the city also would go back and see if there are any candidates worth considering from the previous search, and that he would again meet with the battalion chiefs.
“In the meantime, there is no danger to public safety,” the mayor said.
The flap involving the online postings was “just the icing on the cake” that led to Melchior’s termination, Fruscione said.
“Since his appointment in November, he has hardly ever worked. He spent most of the time on sick leave and vacation time,” the Council president said. “He wasn’t a big performer overall.”
Dyster agreed. “This [Internet issue] was only a trigger,” he said. “We tried to provide opportunities. Everyone can have situations where there is bad luck which can affect your performance, but we think there were long-term issues.”
Melchior, 63, moved from Ellenton, Fla., late last year to take the top job within the 133-member Niagara Falls Fire Department. He was appointed to the position in October but had to delay starting the job because of an illness and a family emergency. He had previously worked in Baltimore and Green Bay, Wis.
He collapsed shortly after he was sworn in, and after leaving the hospital, collapsed again at his home, breaking his leg. Shortly after he returned from a monthlong sick leave to begin his employment, he took a much-criticized two-week vacation to visit family. After returning from vacation, he was out sick for a week with the flu.
The News learned of the Baltimore Fire Officers Association forum postings from a ranking firefighter in that city who expressed concerns about them.
When contacted Friday, Melchior denied making the online comments, one of which had been posted last Wednesday and referred to people from Cairo as “camel jockeys.”
The forum also included recent complaints of the writer having to move his personal vehicle to plow the Fire Department parking lot since he had a “bum leg,” and talked of a meeting last month that included only Melchior, Dyster and a small number of other city staffers.
Fruscione also criticized the national search to hire Melchior. He said the Council, which pays the fire chief’s salary, was not included in the hiring and interview process.
Melchior’s short, rocky tenure with the city marks the third time that a national search for a department head turned sour. The former city engineer, Ali Marzban, was ousted because he did not possess a state professional engineering license, while former Economic Development Director Peter Kay lost his job after Council members cut his salary for this year to $1, citing his ineffectiveness.
“Hopefully the mayor will wake up and realize we don’t need to conduct a national search to find anyone to work for the City of Niagara Falls. He should just focus on looking local and hiring local,” Fruscione said.
Dyster said it was the “mayor’s prerogative” to name the new fire chief, as the chief is a member of his administration.
“There’s a couple of people I hired that I fired,” he said. “I think that’s a sign of a strong administration that’s not afraid to change course when they see that something is not working.”
Dyster said the current senior battalion chiefs are a very capable group, and he would like to promote one of them, but all of them are making more money in their current jobs, and that their pensions are based on the higher pay. City officials said overtime and contractual obligations push battalion chief pay to about $90,000 a year; the fire chief’s job is straight salary paying $79,092.
“The long-term solution is to establish the chief’s position as a civil service position to compensate it appropriately and use that mechanism to choose someone as chief,” Dyster said.
Melchior did not return several calls to comment on his firing.
Fruscione said that has been Melchior’s practice in dealing with those who paid his salary.
“We needed to know what was going on,” the Council chairman said. What were overtime numbers? Did we need to fire the whole department?
“He has never, ever spoken to the Council. Even the day he was hired, he said he was a ‘man of few words’ and wasn’t inclined to address the Council.”
“The person we are dealing with now,” said Dyster, “is not the person we interviewed.”
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