Civil Service Commission sends second letter on fire chief investigation

Correspondence meant to address mayor’s request that issue be looked at further

In a second attempt to put an ongoing issue to rest, the El Dorado Civil Service Commission approved another letter Thursday detailing findings in an investigation concerning Fire Chief Chad Mosby.

In March, the commission had been asked by Mayor Frank Hash to look into concerns about the operations of the El Dorado Fire Department and Mosby after a series of articles appeared in the News-Times regarding 2017 city budget cuts and their affect on staffing and services provided by the fire department.

Mosby later said the information contained in the newspaper articles led to a misunderstanding that spread among city officials and local residents. One of the points raised in the articles involved a reduction in minimum staffing that was implemented as a cost-cutting measure to help meet a $1 million revenue shortfall that was

projected for the city’s general fund.

The articles “created public alarm,” Hash said at the time, pointing in particular to a headline for one of the stories — “Fire Department budget cuts affect city’s safety.”

Hash again pointed to that headline at Thursday’s meeting, saying it told residents there was an unsafe situation when there wasn’t.

“It just simply was not true,” Hash said. “Nothing of this magnitude … can go unchallenged.”

Following an initial investigation, civil service commissioners concluded that Mosby did not commit any wrongdoing that called for disciplinary action. On July 13, they approved a letter to be sent to Hash and local media that contained an explanation of their findings, but Hash then responded to the commission pressing for further investigation. He wrote in an email that “allowing a major department chief to effectively yell fire in a crowded theater is a serious matter and must be dealt with in the strongest of terms … Please complete your task and quickly so!”

Hash said Thursday that the use of such terms in the local media “should have been a red flare for this commission.”

The latest letter, which was approved in an executive session and will be sent to Hash and members of the City Council, stated that after another review, “the findings of the Civil Service Commission lead us to the same position. Chief Mosby did not act in such a way as to warrant reprimand.”

The letter then goes into detailed explanations, including one that noted an article from March 14 which stated that the staffing changes would increase “the chances that the department possibly won’t be adequately prepared for some fires in and around the city, officials said.” According to the letter, Mosby said he did not make that statement and those that were attributed directly to him were found by the commission to “convey the pressure Chief Mosby felt in relation to the request for budget cuts, while measuring the cuts against his primary duty of assuring public safety.”

“Chief Mosby is accountable to both the public and the City Council, as well as the Mayor,” the letter states. “This is a fine line to walk. The Commission does see the situation and subsequent public concern as unfortunate and hopes that important lessons have been learned about appropriate lines of communication between all parties.”

After speaking with commissioners at the meeting, but before the letter was discussed and approved, Hash told commissioners that he was “glad you did what you did” and again noted the city is not in an inadequate or unsafe situation.