Council to decide who leads Manassas fire, rescue departments

Sixty days of back-and-forth between the three fire and rescue organizations in Manassas failed to resolve much.

Members of a subcommittee of representatives of the Greater Manassas Volunteer Rescue Squad, the City of Manassas Fire and Rescue Department and the Manassas Volunteer Fire Company couldn’t agree on any kind of organizational chart, so they tossed the issue back to the three council members who appointed them in the first place.

The subcommittee met Tuesday with councilmen and committee members Andrew L. “Andy” Harrover, Marc T. Aveni and J. Steven Randolph, who were appointed by Mayor Harry J. “Hal” Parrish II to figure out how to structure the three organizations that currently operate somewhat independently.

In the end Harrover, Aveni and Randolph were left with a stack of proposals to weed through and take back to the City Council.

Mike Wood, the paid career chief of the fire department, said he wants the volunteers as well as the career personnel to be organized under his command to conform with state and city codes, to minimize the liability that might come from failure to adhere to those codes and to enhance public safety.

One leader with “operational authority” could make sure those things happen, Wood said.

“My goal when it comes to regulation is to ensure that our personnel operate safely, efficiently and in a compliant manner,” Wood said.

At the same time Wood said he didn’t want to see the “volunteer system degrade.”

Instead, Wood said he wants to strengthen the relationship between the career firefighters and volunteers, without applying too much of a heavy hand.

“It’s not the city fire and rescue department’s intent to over-regulate,” Wood told committee members. “It is the fire and rescue department’s intent to foster a strong, collaborative combination which maintains compliance with all of these regulations and external mandates.”

Michael Enright, president of the rescue squad, agreed there should be one leader and said “rule by committee” doesn’t work.

“We’re at a point in time with fewer and fewer volunteers able to commit time, and we welcome the leadership of the career side of the fire and rescue service,” Enright said.

Still Enright wanted assurance that any reorganization would include a system of checks and balances.

Enright’s vision would have a body, such as a public safety committee, formed of several council members that could resolve any disputes between career and volunteer personnel. 

“Ten years from now we may get someone in there that rules with an iron hand, that’s why we have the appeals committee to fall back on,” Enright said.

Peter Pandolfi, president of Manassas Volunteer Fire Company, suggested that Manassas City Council have oversight of a three-member public safety committee, which would then oversee a fire and rescue committee, which would in turn oversee the volunteer fire company, the rescue squad and the fire department.

Pandolfi worried that the volunteers would lose autonomy in an organization with a career fire chief in control.

“If you write into the city code that the fire and rescue chief is in charge, then we’d lose that ability to say ‘No’,” he said.

Pandolfi said the fire company agreed — in principle, from an operational standpoint — that one person should be in charge.

But administrative decisions should be made through consensus, Pandolfi said.

“Unilateral decisions work fine in a tactical situation ... but they don’t work well in a governmental, broader range administrative area,” he said.

Like Enright, Pandolfi said he worried about some sort of dictatorial leadership down the line with a career fire and rescue chief in charge alone.

“Chief Wood may be an excellent guy in the position that he’s in and he may be very amenable and open to the things the volunteers need and that sort of thing, but that doesn’t mean that the person who replaces Chief Wood is going to be that way,” Pandolfi said.

Parrish, Aveni, Harrover and Randolph all thanked the sub-committee members for their “hard work.”

Harrover said the committee would take the proposals to the full council for a decision on how to structure the organizations.

“It’s back in the council’s lap and we will take action and nobody is going to be 100 percent happy,” Harrover said.

Aveni agreed.

“I want to talk about it with all my council members. We will have to consider all of this and decide what’s best for the citizens of Manassas,” he said. “There will be something gained and probably something lost for all three parties concerned.”

Randolph accepted the council’s responsibility to solve the problem, but expressed some disappointment that the sub-committee hadn’t reached a decision.

“The council ultimately has the responsibility to move forward. We have no greater responsibility as a city council than to provide for the safety of this community.

Nothing else is more important than that,” Randolph said. “We had hoped that the sub-committee ... would come forward with a resolution to deal with the prime areas of consensus and compromise to resolve some of the challenges we face right now. Apparently that has not worked in all cases.”

Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.