Richland removes fire chief as tensions flare up

RICHLAND — The Richland City Council voted 3-2 on June 12 to “accept a resignation” from Fire Chief Mitch Ehrenfelt. The complication: Ehrenfelt didn’t resign.

The move came after firefighters provided written answers to a number of questions posed by city officials at a May 16 special meeting, including a layout of the department’s command structure and the duties of its fire chief.

While that list of answers didn’t contain an explicit resignation from Ehrenfelt, Council Member Alisa Tolle claimed the response constituted one because it said the fire chief was accountable to a board of township representatives, rather than to the city council.

"I did not put words in his mouth,“ she said during the meeting. ”When you have an employee that says, ‘I’m not going to listen to you,’ do you keep your employee?“

Those voting against the motion — Council Members Mike Hadley and Brei Beam — disagreed with Tolle’s interpretation that a violation of city code constituted a resignation.

Hadley called it a “witch hunt.”

“It’s really difficult for me to believe that there’s not some ill intent, at some level,” he said. “There’s been multiple situations where you are at some kind of odds with the fire department … it just seems really weird to me that they’ve been able to work with every other organization that they need to work with, and it’s been streamlined and flawless until it comes into this building, every time.”

The city has not named a new fire chief in Ehrenfelt’s place. Tolle said he was still the “acting fire chief” for the time being. City code states that the interim fire chief is appointed by the mayor “in the case of the removal or departure of the fire chief,” although another section also gives the council power to declare vacancies and appointments.

Ehrenfelt said the department was still running as usual for now, and had answered two out-of-city fire calls on Saturday. In a follow-up interview, he said Tolle’s interpretation of an intentional resignation was “100% incorrect,” but that he remained hopeful solutions were on the horizon.

”The long-term relationships with the city and the fire department will be worked out, somehow, some way,“ he said. ”There’s always new city councils, and when votes come up or elections come up … things change, people have different opinions. But I do know the Richland Fire Department will always do its job to protect the people they cover.“

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‘Muddied waters’

A state audit report released last spring detailed a tangled web of ownership and liability for the volunteer fire department’s services and equipment, bringing adjacent concerns about the department’s nonprofit status, compliance with workers’ compensation requirements, and overall communication with the city council.

While the June 12 agenda item simply read, “Richland Fire Chief,” members of the department said they came to the June 12 meeting expecting a discussion about questions posed by council members at a special meeting May 16.

Fire Department Captain Jerry Gorman said the logical leap to accept an unwilling resignation only soured discussions further, taking volunteers at the meeting by surprise.

“That just totally went in the opposite direction from where it should have gone,” he said. “What they did, it just really changes a lot of peoples’ attitudes … we were going to sit down and have a meeting, and then to go in there and do that to us, that’s just wrong.”

The department claims to have formal intergovernmental arrangements — called 28E agreements — with the townships around Richland, each of which has membership on a fire board that plans department budgets and purchases, using money from a shared fire protection fund they pay into with property tax dollars.

Those agreements, however, have not been approved by city elected officials, and are not verified by any corresponding Department of State records in Des Moines or county records in Sigourney. That makes the agreements invalid, according to Richland City Attorney Misty White.

“Those are not valid 28E agreements, I don’t know what they are,” she said at the June 12 meeting. “Funds can’t be divided based on them.”

The state audit report released in April seemed to support that conclusion.

“It is not clear how the Rural Fire Board was established as there is no documentation supporting the Board as a legal entity,” it said. “According to city personnel, there are 28E agreements between the four townships (Richland, Clay, Black Hawk and Dutch) and the Rural Fire Board. However, these agreements could not be located and, accordingly, we were unable to verify their existence.”

Impasse remains over solutions

Members of the fire department have called for the city to change its laws to meet current practices. Doing so would require substantial revisions to the job duties of the fire chief currently spelled out in city code, and a flurry of city-approved 28E agreements establishing a fire board to manage department accounts in conjunction with the townships, with the city fire chief as a lead consultant.

Gorman said every volunteer was on board with that approach because it would maintain checks and balances between all the local governments who pay for fire protection.

“It’s equal representation,” he said. “Townships, that’s who’s funding this fire department, basically, so they should have some representation. Cities, they’re contributing … but that doesn’t mean that one or the other should have more power.”

By maximizing the voices in department budget decisions, Gorman said such a board would make the most sustainable option.

“This could flip-flop,” he said. “We’re having problems with city hall right now, but what if, in 20 years, maybe we have a great city council, but then the townships change over and then, boom, we’re fighting them. This sets us up for a long-term balance … in my opinion, this is the best way.”

Advocates have argued that shared control with townships would align with budgetary realities: collectively, the four, 36-square-mile local governments are the main contributors to Richland’s fire protection fund.

One volunteer said that made the townships, not the city, the ones to convince.

“Frankly, without the townships, the city can’t afford a fire department,” he said at the May 16 special meeting. “We all need to work together.”

In the meantime, however, White has advised the city against honoring the fire board’s authority. She said its lack of legal documentation made collaboration a liability.

“I’ve heard a lot about changing the ordinance, that’s fine,” she said June 12. “But until those laws are changed, it’s still illegal … There’s no immunity, there’s no protection. Also, if you screw something up, if you burn down somebody else’s building and it comes back against you, the city could be in trouble if you were operating outside the city, because there’s no 28E.”

At least one council member said he was willing to consider changes to the city code that would better align it with the fire department’s vision.

Hadley said doing so was the most logical choice.

“As elected officials, we … do the best thing for our community,” he said. “And sometimes, that’s going to be to rewrite the ordinance.”

Tolle was more skeptical, however, of making any revisions so soon after the chapter was last revised in 2019.

“I do not feel ordinances need to be rewritten to compromise with the fire department,” she said in an interview the week after the June meeting. “I try and go by what it is now, I don’t want to just change it willy-nilly and make what we’re doing now legal. I’m not saying change is not possible … but they want to change it to what they feel they need. And 10 years down the road, it’s not what they need there.”

She also said the department’s proposals were unfairly unilateral, put into practice without proper consultation with the city.

“The way change was trying to happen was aggressive,” she said. “I felt blindsided by the way it was being brought up … the change that they want was done on their end only, then they come to the city council and say, ‘This is what you’ve got to do.’ That, to me, is just not working together.”

The path to a fix is just as messy as the debate over what it would entail.

Firefighters at the June 12 meeting said they wanted to get representatives from the townships, the city and department together at one table for a meeting. Some city officials, however, said they wanted to meet with township trustees one-on-one.

“I want the city of Richland to be fairly represented once and for all in this,” Mayor Tom Hoekstra said to volunteers on June 12. “I want them to understand the city’s position, rather than the firefighters’ position.”

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Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com