Fire chief, Select Board meet in emergency session on the fate of the fire department
The town’s fire inspector is set to retire next week. The fire chief abruptly announced his early retirement at the end of the month after he was kept in the dark about plans for Grafton’s full-time fire chief — and his own future in the department where he’s served for 47.5 years.
To top it off, the last remaining deputy chief, who the town administrator planned to tap as the new acting chief, has his house on the market and plans to move down to Cape Cod.
The Select Board hastily met with Fire Chief Micky Gauthier in executive session Tuesday after a question and answer session left members alarmed about the lack of communication between Town Administrator Tim McInerney and Gauthier at a time when the chief is needed to play a crucial role in the revamp of the fire department.
“No one could actually tell me what my role would be. That concerned me,” Gauthier said. “It’s very discouraging at this point.”
“Unfortunately, what we have not done is not talk to the most important stakeholder, and that is Chief Gauthier,” Select Board member Doreen DeFazio said.
As reported in Grafton Common last week, Gauthier said he has not sat down with McInerney to discuss his job and his role in the fire department’s evolution since Dec. 30. Since then, $65,000 from the department’s FY2021 budget, meant for replacement equipment, was taken away without warning and placed in the recently passed $4 million Proposition 2 1/2 override. The fire chief’s job was posted on multiple job sites last week. And both Gauthier and the Select Board didn’t get a look at the department transition plan until McInerney included it in the Tuesday meeting packet,
“Ladies and gentlemen, I would encourage you to resolve this problem tonight,” said Ray Mead, who headed up the Fire Study Committee. “Not tomorrow, not next week. Tonight. Right now, Micky’s leaving and we’re all in the crap. That’s as blunt as I can be.”
With McInerney on vacation, the Select Board was unable to ask him in details about his plans for the fire department, and Assistant Town Administrator Rebecca Meekins said she was “not part of those conversations.”
“I feel this board dropped the ball over the past few years,” Select Board member Ed Prisby said. “I take that on myself as well.”
Gauthier said he had come up with a plan to help out with the transition but preferred to discuss it in executive session as a contract negotiation.
When he was appointed as the successor to the last chief, he worked closely with the chief but did not take on the title himself until the day after that chief retired, he added.
“We can only have one fire chief.,” Gauthier said. “That’s it. The fire chief is the one who is in charge.”
