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Back in 2007 in my first year on the council I discovered that Warwick Ordinances stipulated that the Fire Chief had to be hired from an existing firefighter within the department.

Researching the issue where overtime cost were constantly over budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars, along with other line items such as sick pay buy backs also over budget, I felt that whoever was chief had a conflict of interest in that they were supervising there own union members who they served with and would never take any measures to rein in these problems.

I knew then that the mayor needed the ability to be able to hire the best possible candidate as chief whether they worked in or out of the department. As a result I proposed a controversial change to the hiring ordinance that eliminated that language.

To say that the WFD opposed this change was an understatement. However the ordinance passed.

Its interesting that Mayor Avedisian continued with the revolving door practice of promoting new chiefs from within and with many taxpayers looking into the over spending practices of the WFD, the intimidation tactics continued.

To restore confidence in the department and enact major reforms, Mayor Solomon needs to utilize this provision and hire the next Chief from outside of the city and even from out of state.