Maybe the Monroe City Council should build their own Monroe Fire Department chief, if that even would be possible given the contradictory signals they continue to give in rejecting independent Mayor Friday Ellis’ choices for the job.
Ellis now has had two choices to helm the department shot down by the same three black Democrats who comprise the majority of the Council: Rodney McFarland, Verbon Muhammad, and Juanita Woods. His first, longtime MFD firefighter Daniel Overturf, occurred last year. While Overturf was considered a highly popular choice as a poll of the department revealed, the so-called “Brown Bombers” then said his middle-of-the-pack scoring on the state exam all municipal chief candidates must take and alleged communications from constituents against the pick led to their rejection.
The next choice, Bastrop Fire Chief Timothy Williams, seemed to negate these complaints. He scored highest of all on the exam, was the only one among the five finalists with chief experience, and no alleged opposition in the community against his nomination was noted. Further, prior to his becoming Bastrop chief three years ago he had guided the department to the highest fire rating possible, as part of a history of achievement within the department. And, multiple times Ellis had solicited input from councilors about this choice, without receiving any.
However, this wasn’t good enough either for the Council majority. The excuse this time was Williams directed a department too small, as Monroe is trying to hang around 50,000 in population while Bastrop is pushing 10,000, and the departmental sizes reflect that; in fact, each of the majority gave a preference for hiring within the MFD. But keep in mind that not only has Williams run a department, he has run one well and very much to the satisfaction of the public and government. And, besides letters written in his support as an indicator of how Williams relates to the community, while he as well as Overturf is white, Bastrop’s population is nearly 80 percent black and the mayor who appointed him and continues to keep in office is black.
So, according to the Council majority to pass muster you have to have longtime experience in the MFD, score highly on the exam, and not draw supposed specific complaints from the community regardless whether it and firefighters generally seem to regard a candidate highly. Not only may no such candidate exist, at least not until another test is done with almost a year already gone by, but you may not even be able to build one if that were possible.
Sadly, the more this drags on, the more it seems that the issue of race is rearing its ugly head in the actions of the members of the Council majority. Unfortunately, a persistent theme of theirs has been, across a range of appointive issues, euphemistically that Monroe’s south side – their districts – isn’t getting its “fair share” of city resources, whether than be jobs or spending, where that part of the city has a highly concentrated black population. It’s becoming to appear that if someone black from the MFD with something somewhat close to Overturf’s or Williams’ qualifications been offered up the Bombers would have confirmed him in a heartbeat.
A mayor needs to have a chief who shares his vision of how the department should operate and one he thinks has the proper leadership and community relations abilities. Otherwise, he puts someone in office in which he doesn’t have confidence, if not becomes obstructive, that sets things up for failure. And race for race’s sake should be irrelevant in that choice.
A council should confirm when the person a mayor picks who he feels he can work with shows the capacity to do the job adequately or better, not veto choices because these don’t tick off a certain box that shouldn’t matter in performing this job due to fealty to a political agenda. If the rejections are part of a pressure campaign for Ellis to nominate a black internal candidate, that needs to stop, and Ellis needs to continue to make picks he feels would work the best for all of Monroe regardless of their skin color.
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