Outgoing Vernon Fire Chief Jeff Carlisle suggests the City look within the ranks of the Vernon squad in the hunt for his replacement. The search for a new chief is set to get underway following Carlisle's resignation last week. He is getting set to take on the job in Kelowna in early January. ``I believe it is always really good to promote from within and I'm sure there'll be some folks internally who'll apply for that,'' says Carlisle. The hunt for a Kelowna chief was long and arduous with close to 100 candidates involved but Vernon Mayor Wayne Lippert doesn't believe this community will have the same problems. ``The operations and stuff are physically smaller than Kelowna,'' points out Lippert. ``A chief is a chief but we need to make sure we get someone for a community our size and for our needs.'' Vernon currently has one longtime deputy chief, Laurie Skolrood. A second deputy, Rick Owens, resigned some months ago. ``The City will be recruiting for a fire chief as soon as possible,'' says Administrative Manager Marg Bailey. She expresses the hope there will be someone in place before Carlisle leaves at the end of December.
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Chief Plans Ahead
He's got a new job lined up in Kelowna, but Jeff Carlisle still has work to do as Vernon's fire chief. Carlisle says his last day in Vernon Fire Rescue will be January 4th. He says they're just going into budget time. "And so there's lots of work here, and there's other issues that council's asked me to look at, and I hope to complete all those before I trasition to Kelowna" Carlisle says one of his accomplishments in his two years here, is what he calls normalizing operations between the Landing and downtown stations.
He's got a new job lined up in Kelowna, but Jeff Carlisle still has work to do as Vernon's fire chief. Carlisle says his last day in Vernon Fire Rescue will be January 4th. He says they're just going into budget time. "And so there's lots of work here, and there's other issues that council's asked me to look at, and I hope to complete all those before I trasition to Kelowna" Carlisle says one of his accomplishments in his two years here, is what he calls normalizing operations between the Landing and downtown stations.
