Andy Johnson, the chair of Vashon Island Fire & Rescue’s board of commissioners, resigned from his elected post last week, saying in a letter that he hoped the board could return to the “goals of collaboration and respect” that he “feared were being left behind.”

Johnson, who has worked as a paramedic for the past 26 years, was elected in 2017 to serve a six-year term.

According to Washington statutes, commissioners have 90 days, from the time of Johnson’s resignation, to fill the vacant commissioner seat, a process that will include a public call for applicants and interviewing selected applicants in a public meeting. The selected applicant will serve the remainder of Johnson’s term.

Commissioner Candy McCullough, who on Jan. 26 had been voted in by the board to serve as its vice-chair, will now serve as the interim chair of the commissioners. In a phone interview, McCollough defined Johnson’s departure as a “big loss” and seemed to echo his call for board members to better comport themselves.

“I hope we can find somebody as fair and compassionate as him, who will have good, clear and open communication skills that will let us move forward in a professional way,” she said.

In his resignation letter, Johnson discussed the recent toll his work as a commissioner had taken on his personal life.

“When I took my seat four years ago I did not expect it to be easy, and it was not,” he wrote. “However, throughout that time we mostly managed to conduct business in a manner that was respectful and always sought a collaborative outcome.”

In the letter, he also apologized to the VIFR’s board and administration, as well as the public, for his resignation, but said he no longer felt that he could be effective in his elected capacity.

“Although I worry about the future of this department, I can no longer be part of the solution,” he wrote.

Johnson further elaborated on his decision in a phone interview with The Beachcomber, saying his decision to resign had come about after the November election changed the board’s make-up.

“We’ve lost civility on the part of some members,” he said, adding that a “massive” increase in the volume of email communication about board business and a level of “rancor” in these communications had made managing the day-to-day business of VIFR much more difficult.

In addition to McCollough, VIFR’s other remaining commissioners are Camille Staczek and newly elected commissioners Pam King and John Simonds. Both ran unopposed for the seats.

Since being sworn in as commissioner, Simonds has been a vocal and sometimes dominating presence in commissioner meetings. In years prior to his election, Simonds was a frequent critic of the fire district — in particular its policy of fees-for-transport — bringing up his concerns in a number of formats including lengthy and sometimes heated comments at commissioner meetings and holding up signs in the main intersection in town.

At the Jan. 26 meeting — his first as a commissioner — Simonds put forth a motion for a major restructuring of VIFR’s staffing. The motion called for VIFR to add 10 full-time firefighter/EMT positions, while ending its part-time emergency responder program, with current part-timers first in line for the new full-time positions. The change, he said, would cost VIFR $1 million a year.

The motion was not immediately seconded by another board member — until a firefighter union official in attendance at the meeting asked for a discussion on the subject. At that point, the motion was seconded and a long discussion ensued before the motion failed by a 4 to 1 vote, with Simonds the sole yea vote.

After the most recent commissioners’ meeting, on Feb. 23, Simonds told The Beachcomber that at that meeting, he had halted a closed executive session during which the hiring of an assistant chief for the district was to have been discussed. Discussing the matter in closed session, he said, violated Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).

McCollough, in her phone interview with The Beachcomber, agreed that the discussion, if it had been held in closed session, would have been in violation of OPMA, but said the decision to discuss to issue in that format had been a simple mistake. Once the mistake was pointed out, she said, all had agreed to move the topic to the public portion of the meeting, where it took place.

Over a three-day period taking place from Feb. 24 to 26, Simonds sent a total of 15 emails to The Beachcomber, with some of the correspondence being forwarded copies of his other correspondence with VIFR staff and commissioners on those days. Those emails contained requests for numerous documents, a request for an additional meeting to discuss the hiring of the assistant chief, and an email to the district secretary with a subject line of “apology,” in which Simonds said he felt that Johnson “could have called order on me at the [Jan. 26] meeting [and] no doubt and should have.”

That email ended, however, with an accusation that Fire Chief Krimmert had attempted to discredit Simonds at the meeting by disputing a fact that Simonds had presented. n

After Johnson’s resignation, The Beachcomber asked Simonds, in an email, what he thought Johnson had meant when he mentioned the board’s declining “standard of collaboration and respect” in his letter of resignation.

In one of two replies to the question, Simonds said that Johnson “could be referring to my efforts to end the ‘go along to get along’ travesty of what has become our fire district mismanagement … Handing over almost all important fire board duties, meant to be done by the fire board out in the open at public fire board meetings, to our Fire Chief to be done behind closed doors.”

In a second email, Simonds brought up the fact that his motion to restructure staffing in the district had not received a second until a union official in attendance called for a discussion.

“Does that sound like conduct and collaboration of respect? Check the tape,” he wrote.

He also vowed to further his efforts to continue to “clean up” the fire district.

“Fire district management is a mess, islander lives and our emergency responder lives hang in the balance, cleaning it up may not be pretty, but it must be cleaned up,” he wrote.