Fire chief asks to be reassigned

The top administrators at the Whitefish Fire Department swapped job titles unexpectedly last week.

According to city manager Chuck Stearns, fire chief Tom Kennelly asked to be reassigned to fire marshal, while fire marshal Joe Page in turn was named interim fire chief. The changes took effect Sept. 15.

Kennelly will no longer work in the Emergency Services Center building, Stearns said. Instead, he will work out of an office at City Hall across town. As fire marshal, Kennelly will be reviewing plans for buildings and doing inspections.

Stearns said the city is not actively searching for a new fire chief.

The change in administration comes in the wake of a complaint against Kennelly that claimed he discriminated against a candidate during a promotion process for a captain position in 2013.

A grievance arbitration between the city and Whitefish fire union took place in April, with the ruling in favor of the union.

The Pilot obtained a copy of the arbitration report that resolved the labor dispute.

In the arbitration, the union contended that Kennelly overlooked a candidate for promotion because of the candidate’s union activism.

The city denied the claims of discrimination and anti-union bias, and argued that promotion is a managerial decision.

Kennelly testified that while he believes captains should be separated from the union, and that he had on occasion made anti-union comments out of frustration with complacency and contract negotiations, he did not discriminate against the candidate.

In its analysis, the arbitration panel found several errors in the scoring systems used in the promotion examination, and concluded that incorrect weighting of scores and a failure to ensure accuracy was influenced by the candidate’s union activities.

Kennelly testified that Excel spreadsheets are sometimes off and that he didn’t notice the scoring errors.

Following arbitration, the candidate was retroactively promoted to captain.

Whitefish Fire Department union president Scott Alexander declined Monday to comment on the change in administration leadership. A phone call by the Pilot to Kennelly was not returned by presstime.

Kennelly was hired in 2008 as fire chief after Dave Sipe retired. He moved here from Conifer, Colo., where he previously worked as fire chief of the Elk Creek Fire Department.

Page joined the Whitefish Fire Department as assistant fire chief and fire marshal in 2013. He previously worked under Kennelly at Elk Creek where he was the chief administrative coordinator and the training and safety officer.