A new Fire Chief Search Committee will help the town administrator find a new chief after the abrupt resignation of Fire Chief David E. Zinther. The chief's resignation letter is dated July 19, the day after he last addressed the Board of Selectmen and asked for approval to hire a ninth full-time firefighter. The effort failed.
At the July 18 selectmen's meeting, Chief Zinther, wearing his dress uniform, welcomed Jonathan Becker and Awtumn Courville as a new full-time and a part-time firefighter, respectively.
After the approval of the new employees, Chief Zinther told selectmen the Fire Department’s log for multiple calls (which he described as “calls for service that come in during the time that the primary crew in the station has already committed to an incident”) shows 137 multiple calls from January to June of this year, compared to 138 multiple calls for all of last year.
“These calls for service are no longer considered to be infrequent. They’re considered to becoming part of our routine standard business model,” Chief Zinther said. “It is very important that we try to increase our staffing in order to handle these secondary calls.”
In his resignation letter the next day, Chief Zinther said, “Although I have always strived to improve the direction of the Department, it is apparent that my visions and approach to certain issues and the acceptance and support needed for them to become a reality are a span much too far to bridge.”