After 14 months on the job, chief Jack Mlnarik is leaving the Oregon Area Fire/EMS District. Mlnarik told the Observer Monday that his last day would be Sept. 14. He’s accepted an offer to become fire chief in the Village of Bellevue, a community of about 15,000 near Green Bay. Mlnarik told the Observer that Bellevue is his wife’s hometown, and the couple has always been interested in living and working there. “It was an extremely difficult decision” to leave Oregon, Mlnarik said. “I didn’t have my name in anywhere else.” Mlnarik said he promised his wife when they got married that if the job of fire chief in Bellevue ever came up, he would apply for it. “It was always her dream to move back home,” he explained. “I’ve been doing this for 20-some years now, and in that time she’s missed a lot of family events. So I figured it was the right thing to do because of all the sacrifices she’s made.” Mlnarik said the district here has been “extremely easy” to work with, and he feels that together with the members of the department, he’s accomplished a lot in the past 14 months. Since he arrived in June 2015, the fire district has added three new full-time firefighters, worked on updating village ordinances relating to the district, and Mlnarik has nearly completed rewriting and implementing the department’s standard operating guidelines.