In remarks made at the halfway mark of a six-month consultancy with Vashon Fire & Rescue, two seasoned fire service professionals gave ringing endorsements of the leadership of Ben Davidson, who was named the district’s interim chief in late January.

Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority Chief Brian Carson, and Norm Golden, who is Puget Sound’s deputy chief in charge of community risk reduction, spoke during VIFR’s April 30 board meeting.

With 450 employees, Puget Sound Fire is one of the largest fire departments in King County.

The VIFR board approved Puget Sound’s consultancy with VIFR after Vashon’s former fire chief, Matt Vinci, announced that he would depart the district to serve as the fire chief of a larger district in Spokane County.

Since that time, Golden has worked for VIFR roughly 10 hours per week, supporting Davidson, VIFR Finance and Human Resources Director Christina Bosch and others.

VIFR’s board has now also contracted with Prothman, a recruitment firm which last month opened a national search (tinyurl.com/5n8x7x27) for candidates for the fire chief position.

Davidson, an applicant for the permanent post, has repeatedly declared his readiness to serve.

“I want what’s best for VIFR — to maintain the same level of safety for our members and high level of service to our community,” Davidson said at the time of Vinci’s resignation. “I understand the district, having been integral in all aspects of its operations in recent years. I feel confident I can help the district to continue and grow the great work we’ve been doing.”

At the April 30 board meeting, Carson said when he had first tapped Golden to be VIFR’s consultant, neither he or Golden were sure what to expect in terms of working with Davidson.

[Golden] wasn’t sure if he was coming over here to be your fire chief, and that has absolutely not been the case,” Carson said. “In terms of a division of labor, Ben Davidson is your fire chief, and Norm is essentially acting as your deputy chief.”

Getting to know Chief Davidson, he said, had been “a pleasant surprise.” He recalled, how, over their first lunch together, he had asked Davidson if he was sure he wanted to be Vashon’s fire chief.

Davidson, he said, had assured him that he wanted the job for the right reasons, demonstrating investment in the community and in VIFR, Carson said.

“We are very impressed with your interim fire chief,” he said. “We think you have a good one, so much so that I’m not necessarily sure that you need to be looking for something better than what you have. And that’s me overstepping a little bit, but that’s my perspective through the halfway point of this agreement with you.”

Golden characterized Davidson as trusted in his community.

“Wherever I go out with Ben, I feel like I’m with somebody special, because people are coming up — saying hi, or waving as they go down the road,” he said. “That’s how Vashon is — you all know each other. There’s accountability there. And when you are providing service, you’re doing it for your family.”

Union, board perspectives

Commissioner Candy McCullough — one of three commissioners at the meeting along with Chair Brigitte Schran Brown and Amy Drayer — said she believed Davidson does not yet have the experience to serve as chief. McCullough cast the sole no vote among commissioners in late February to name Davidson as interim chief, saying she believed he needed more mentoring first.

McCullough referred to two emails, sent to the board in December and January by Vashon’s local firefighter union members, which she characterized as saying “Please, find somebody with experience and knowledge.”

Both emails, signed by Local 4189 President Matt Hergott, were obtained by The Beachcomber and are accessible in the online version of this story.

The first email, dated Dec. 12 and written shortly after Vinci announced he would resign, said that union members saw VIFR’s “current Senior Management Team and the uniformed officers as a vital source of continuity as the department moves into its next phase; however, we believe that continuity is best achieved by those individuals remaining in their current roles at this time.”

The email urged the board to “consider engaging with another [fire] department on a contract for services” — an action the board took by establishing its consultancy with Puget Sound Fire, though in a less expansive way and for a shorter time period than recommended by the union.

The second email, dated Jan. 3, recommended that VIFR undertake a robust process in its search for the district’s next fire chief.

“Through such a process, we may very well find that the best available candidate is internal,” that email said, in part. “Even if that is the case, we see the process as beneficial for everyone because: 1) it would give internal candidates time to demonstrate their capabilities in an expanded capacity in the meantime, and 2) it would give internal candidates the opportunity to prove themselves through a process consistent with most hirings and promotions in the fire service, which would provide the legitimacy and respect amongst the staff and community that everyone deserves in their role.”

Hergott, in a phone interview, said that both emails, at the time they were sent, reflected a consensus position by the union’s 27 members. And while hiring a consultant to lead VIFR full-time — as the union had advocated for in December — had not turned out to be an option, Hergott said he was pleased both with Golden’s current work with the district and that the search process with Prothman Associates was now underway.

“Things are going well at the department, and we’re moving in the right direction,” he said, adding the the union “has a good working relationship with Chief Davidson right now.”

“We’re looking forward to being part of the selection process going forward,” he said.

At the April 30 board meeting, McCullough asked Carson and Golden if they were suggesting that the VIFR board forego the national search for a fire chief. Carson and Golden said that was not the case.

“We’re giving you a scouting report on the person you have doing the job,” Carson said, assuring her that Golden would continue to report to both him and the board about the progress of the district in the next three months of his consultancy.

Also responding to McCullough’s comments, Carson said he believed that Davidson, despite having not served before as a fire chief, did in fact “check a lot of the boxes” needed for a chief executive on Vashon.

“For this organization, in particular, the ability to communicate issues that are really specific to Vashon might be more important,” he said. “That’s part of what Chief Golden and I have come to appreciate over these three short months with you — this isn’t like any of the other communities we serve.”

Community support

Following the April 30 meeting, The Beachcomber reached out to leaders of agencies and community groups affiliated with VIFR to get their take Davidson’s tenure as interim fire chief.

Vicky de Monterey Richoux, president of VashonBePrepared, which develops and maintains plans and procedures for disaster responses on the island in collaboration with VIFR, lauded Davidson’s work as interim chief.

“I’m very pleased to work with Ben — his local knowledge and long tenure on Vashon makes a real difference,” she said, adding that she was “thrilled” that Davidson and his captains had been showing up at VashonBePrepared’s monthly drills — a practice that had lapsed under Vinci’s time as fire chief.

“We want to form relationships — relationships are really important when you’re in a disaster,” she said.

Jim Bristow, a physician with Vashon’s Medical Reserve Corps, characterized his endorsement of Davidson as “unqualified.”

Bristow said that Davidson’s eagerness to collaborate, and his knowledge about how the community works has, “been a breath of fresh air.” Currently, he said, he is working with Davidson on a new collaborative program between the MRC, the Yates Foundation and VIFR that he is excited to announce soon.

“I’ve known Ben for a little while now, and he’s always been engaging and personable,” Bristow said. “In a place like Vashon, that matters — people are paying attention in a way here that they aren’t in other communities. It’s important that the fire chief understands the community.”

MJ Witt, the manager of Community Emergency Response Team, another volunteer group affiliated with VashonBePrepared, said Davidson had reinvigorated VIFR’s collaboration with his group and other disaster clubs on Vashon.

For his part, he said that he and others in the community hoped that Davidson would be chosen as VIFR’s permanent chief — citing a recent social media thread in which numerous islanders had endorsed the idea of the board hiring Davidson as chief.

“The chance of having a long-lasting chief [with] knowledge about the community is a good choice for what Vashon needs right now,” he said, noting that in past years the fire chief job had been a bit of a “revolving door,” and that each time a new chief arrived there had been a period of adjustment during which relationships had to be rebuilt.

Two other islanders also weighed in — Tom Langland, the chair of Vashon Health Care District, and its superintendent, Tim Johnson.

While both praised the work of Matt Vinci, they described tensions that had arisen between their agency and VIFR after the health care district voted last year to sign a $1.5 million two-year contract with a for-profit company, DispatchHealth, to provide seven-day-a-week urgent care on Vashon.

Vinci vocally opposed the plan, saying he believed DispatchHealth could disrupt the fire district’s Mobile Integrated Health program as well as emergency care on Vashon. An immediate expansion of MIH, he said, would be a much more cost-effective and well-integrated urgent care fit for the island.

After being invited by VHCD to develop a plan for such an expansion, Vinci and his staff received approval from VIFR’s board to do so. Vinci then presented the plan at the same August meeting during which the VHCD board later voted to ink its contract with DispatchHealth.

After that time, communications withered between the two districts, even as DispatchHealth rolled out service on Vashon and Mobile Integrated Health proceeded with plans to expand its staff, adding a licensed independent social worker and opening a search for a physician’s assistant for the program.

Now, Langland said, with Davidson as interim chief, the two districts are regularly meeting again — an extremely welcome development.

“There is much more open mindedness coming from Vashon Fire & Rescue … we want to partner with them to enhance MIH on the island [and] we’ve allocated some funding for that,” said Langland, calling MIH “the best mousetrap” for providing mobile health care on Vashon.

“We’re having regular meetings, and it’s a great relief to think we have allies on Bank Road rather than adversaries,” he said. Johnson also said he has welcomed renewed communication and collaboration with the fire district. “I think we’re going to build some resilience on Vashon, because we all work together and figure it out,” he said.

Firefighter perspective

Josh Dueweke, a longtime career firefighter and captain in the district, also gave his perspective on Davidson’s leadership, emphasizing that his comments are his own opinion and do not represent Vashon Firefighter’s Local 4189.

He has known and worked with Davidson for well over a decade, Dueweke said, observing Davidson learning and absorbing the administrative duties and responsibilities of the district, which included working for two years as a division and deputy chief under Vinci. Davidson helped negotiate the current contracts with the Local firefighter’s union, was an integral part of the recent hirings and promotional processes, and has been involved with the opening of Station 56 and the remodel of Station 55, Dueweke said.

As interim chief, Dueweke said, Davidson has drawn on that experience while making decisions that express his own values and approach to the leadership role.

“Ben believes in delegation, with the intention of creating buy-in, inclusion, and people collaborating on behalf of the district — whether those people are probationary firefighters or officers,” he said.

In terms of the board’s search for a new fire chief, Dueweke said that he and other union members had advocated for a fair, transparent and thoughtful process in the leadership transition. The goal of this process is to discover the person best fit for the position of fire chief. If it shows that Davidson is the best option, it legitimizes his title as VIFR’s chief.

“Ben and I can speak candidly about things and have honest conversations about what’s best for the community and the district,” he said. “Working with others, including volunteers and other entities, has been one of Ben’s priorities.”