Bryan Brice will be the city’s new fire chief, according to a news release from the mayor’s office.
Brice, who will start Aug. 8, is coming from Oxnard, California, where he was chief of an eight-station fire department. Before that, he was a division chief with the Orange County Fire Authority, where he worked for 26 years.
Mount Vernon’s department, with three stations and about 50 personnel, is significantly smaller than either of Brice’s previous departments. Brice said he hopes to bring more long-term strategic planning to the department, asking the city council and the public what they expect from their fire department, and determining staffing and budgetary needs from there.
“There is no perfect system,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s (about) borrowing from other systems, (and) being open to new ideas.”