By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – St. Tammany Fire District #1 Chairman Dan Crowley said it didn’t take long for rumors to begin circulating about certain candidates already having the fire chief job secured, following the resignation last September of longtime Chief Larry Hess.
But Crowley said his years in the military are guiding the current process to select a new chief, and he is assuring the public that no one has an advantage.
This Friday and Saturday, Jan. 11 and 12, interviews will be held by the Board of Commissions with 13 candidates facing a comprehensive list of questions that will rate the applicants who have made it this far.
“The thing we want to make clear to the public is that no person has a leg up,” he said. “Rumors have been out for a long time that the Mandeville chief or Chris Kaufmann have the job already. But there is no truth to that. If Chris ends up winning the job it will be based on the fact he is the best candidate.”
Kaufmann has been second in command to Hess for many years and naturally drew attention for the job, which he acknowledged he has applied for. Crowley said “two or three other” members of District #1 are also in the 13 candidate list, all of whom passed the Civil Service test and also cleared background and security checks with no problems.
“We didn’t have a set criteria, but decided that if they passed the test and other checks, they would be interviewed,” Crowley said.
The board chairman said each candidate will face a list of 10 questions, then be graded by the five member commission board on five categories that include different topics such as leadership, presentation and more. Board members will rank each candidate with a score of 1 to 20, then grade them all from 1 to 50 on the confidence level the board member has in that candidate. All board members, and the current interim chief, were solicited for question ideas.
“This test is taken from the way we did it in the military and it is a great way to be completely fair to all candidates,” Crowley said. “We even throw out the high and low score so nothing unusual throws off the ranking. What we have always found is that the scores end up ranking each applicant clearly from top to bottom.”
He said the bottom scoring two or three applicants will then be re-evaluated by the board as a whole to make sure they didn’t miss anything, and decide if any of those candidates should be ranked higher.
From the overall scores, the board will select the top three or four and bring them in for a final interview on Saturday, Jan. 25.
“We want the public to be mindful that this process is as detailed as it can be and no one has any influence on any voting board member in advance,” he said. “The person selected chief, whoever that ends up being, will win the job on their merits—plain and simple.”
Crowley said the interview process is not open to the public.