Bauxite's City Council reversed the mayor's firing of the Volunteer Fire Department's chief Monday, as long as he follows certain conditions.
Mayor Johnny McMahan fired Fire Chief John Davis in a letter dated Feb. 28. The mayor said Davis hadn't turned in fire incident reports for 2013 and 2014 to the state Fire Academy in Camden for the National Fire Incident Reporting System, as required by the state's fire code. The mayor also said Davis didn't review information for federal grant applications, adding that some of the information was incorrect.
After an hour-long executive session Monday, Bauxite aldermen unanimously voted to overturn the firing, prompting a standing ovation from the crowd. During a special council meeting March 6, three of the five aldermen voted to overturn the firing, but they lacked the two-thirds majority needed to move forward with the decision.
"It's all a misunderstanding," Davis said Tuesday. "I'm just going to go forward and show them they made the right decision."
Under the conditions of his rehiring, Davis will give aldermen a monthly report on calls answered by the department, along with updates on the incident reporting and information on vehicle maintenance. Incident reports must be done "in a timely manner," Alderman Allison Cain said, adding that all volunteer firemen, including Davis, will undergo immediate background checks and immediate and random drug screenings.
The council placed Davis under a six-month probation period with those conditions.
Aldermen will also provide Davis with some administrative oversight, including a review of the Fire Department's policy and procedure manual and revisions to the department's grant-submission process.
The five-member council also approved the department's purchase of a new computer with a $700 cap, along with allowing the department to obtain a debit card for small expenditures, Cain said.
"Getting a computer is the most pressing issue," Cain said.
Davis has said he couldn't submit the incident reports, which detail the calls to which firemen respond, because the department's one computer lagged and often froze. If the Fire Department doesn't turn in the incident reports, it stands to miss out on some Federal Emergency Management Agency grants for fire equipment.
"It'll be a couple days to get all them incident reports entered in and be done with it," Davis said. "As soon as they get me one [a computer], I can get on the ball and get this stuff done."
Davis, who stayed on as a volunteer firefighter after he was fired as chief, has also said the grant applications simply contained old information.
He said he looked at his rehiring as a second chance to improve communication between the department, the council and the mayor.
"I'm more free to bring up issues and more free to explain what's going on with the Fire Department besides going up there and reading the run reports," he said. "Before, comments were made that I don't need to bring up anything."
McMahan said Tuesday he was against the reinstatement, but decided not to fight it so as not to start a "vicious cycle."
"I was against it, and I'm still against it," he said. "I think we need new leadership. If they want to go backwards, hey, so be it."
However, the mayor plans to veto the debit-card action, saying it was "foolish to issue the Fire Department a credit card without any strong ordinance or checks or balances in place." The council can overturn McMahan's veto with a two-thirds vote.
No other department has a debit card, McMahan said. The city has Wal-Mart and Office Depot credit cards used mainly by the administration, he said.
If departments need items, the directors either charge their personal card and get reimbursed or wait for the city to issue a check, officials have said. Reimbursements take two to three weeks, McMahan said.
McMahan said he was being "very, very careful" about the Fire Department's card, indicating that there had been problems with credit-card use before his tenure.
The council on Monday didn't place a cap on spending limits or any other regulations on the card.
But the council could always draft an ordinance, Alderman Paula Matthews said, adding that there are ways of keeping up with who spent a certain amount on a certain item.
"I'm glad he was reinstated," Matthews said. "To be quite honest, he shouldn't have been fired in the first place. It was all a misunderstanding. It was just drawing your own conclusions without seeking out the facts."
Metro on 03/19/2014