See Woodinvile Fire & Rescue Scandal Timeline Here->
Former Woodinville Fire & Rescue chief I. David Daniels agreed to withdraw his formal discrimination charge against the fire district after the WF&R board of commissioners agreed to add an additional three months to his severance package — tantamount to about $40,000.
(by Arthur Hu)
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Former Woodinville Fire & Rescue chief I. David Daniels agreed to withdraw his formal discrimination charge against the fire district after the WF&R board of commissioners agreed to add an additional three months to his severance package — tantamount to about $40,000.
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Daniels and the board issued a joint press release stating the following: “Woodinville Fire & Rescue’s Fire Chief/CEO I. David Daniels has offered his resignation effective November 9, 2011, and the District’s Board of Fire Commissioners has accepted his resignation.
“Chief Daniels’ objective since his arrival at the District in January 2010 has been to implement the goals and directives of the District’s Board of Fire Commissioners. He has worked tirelessly and successfully to do so.
“Chief Daniels has taken thoughtful action to address numerous challenges and significant changes prompted by annexations and the resulting reductions in revenue. He has also assembled a superlative executive team to manage the District’s administrative affairs.
“Under the current circumstances, because his objective at all times has been to serve the interests of the District to the best of his abilities, the Chief offered his resignation.
“The Chief’s efforts and accomplishments have been greatly appreciated by the District’s Board.”
Ugh!
Gees this makes me sick to my stomach.
It's not over until they get rid of the fire commisioners responsible for this mess.
My reaction? This makes me ill. When One down, the others have to go. When the chief fails this badly, the fault has to be the commissioners to went out of their way to fire a perfectly good chief and his right hand people to hand pick Daniels without a proper selection process. I still haven't talked directly to anybody to hear what exactly what was going on, but it sounds like they punished the old chief for doing a good job and replaced him with a new guy who would happily do whatever the commissioners wanted him to do no matter how bad an idea it was.
Arthur Hu, Bothell
No wonder Olson got beat so badly:
WOODINVILLE FIRE & RESCUE
Commissioner Position No. 1
Clint Olson 1146 20.90%
Mark C. Emery 4323 78.84%
Later I'll post the trail of articles of the history of this sorry debacle. I'll bet crap like this goes on in fire departments all across America.
Update: This is my most popular local/Bothell article, getting dozens of hits a day. This is what I put into the Woodinville paper, I don't know if they printed it but it's on their webblog
Fire Commissioners Responsible for Woodinville Fire Chief
Debacle
This only gets worse. Normally I write stuff for Asian Week,
but this is just nuts.
First I read about they're firing the old chief and 3 of his
best people for no reason at all, and they paid somebody some obscene $80,000
to produce a report with the pre-determined conclusion to try to come up with
some reason to fire him, but they can't tell anybody what it is.
They bring in some slick new African American fire chief
from Renton which is nearly 10 times the size of Woodinville. This town has
absolutely no demographics affirmative action requirement unless they need his
family to help the town start to look like Renton, which was my home town when
my family was one of the only minority families there back then.
They pay him $160,000 and and give him a personal secretary
(what is this, the 1950s??) add a couple of managers nobody thinks is needed,
and fire a bunch of people everybody thinks they do need. It's an absurd salary
for such as small community and say it's about about reducing costs??? I don't
know much about Chief Daniels, but if he's anything like the flashy overpaid
school superindendents that float about, it's all spending more public money on
reform, restructing, change agents, "vision" whatever the heck that
is, and goal setting and making speeches. It's never about knowing a thing
about actually knowing the basics of running a school district or a fire
district and no good deed goes unpunished. They screw things up, people send
them packing with a big severance package, and repeat the same thing in the
next city foolish enough to play the same game.
Two years later, not only everybody in Woodinville hates the
new chief, the people back in Renton go to the trouble of telling the world
they still hate him too, and some folks even say he didn't leave a happy camp
in Georgia either. The only people who defended him are the same commissioners
who somehow have managed to direct the community wrath at chief Daniels and not
the people who hand picked him, and even they have to tell him it's time to go.
Now Daniels has the nerve to sue for race discrimination
when, if anything, race looks like it could have been a part of why he was
hired. Northwest Asian Weekly highlighted when a technical college in Renton
was firing white officials for not "promoting enough diversity". I
was the gadfly asking why colleges were using race quotas in the 80s, and was
the fellow in San Jose in the 90s who blew the whistle when a black fire chief
down there made it his crusade to insure that the new class of firefighters had
a strict quota of only one token white male. He thought his job was maximize diversity
when the force already had more than enough African Americans to reflect the
community it served. Two highly qualified firefighters were hired and TWO fire
chiefs in a row left at the end of that episode with the help of an Asian
American civil rights lawyer when their agenda was obviously politics, not
fighting fires.
I also heard that up north in Snohomish County they also had
to pay a lot of money to fire another perfectly good fire chief because the
commissioners up there also just wanted a change of scenery. People need to
wake up and notice when crazy stuff like this goes on in small communities and
not stand for it, and though I live in
Bothell, I congratulate all of you who stood up and said
you're as mad as heck and won't take it anymore.
Thankfully, leadership in Northshore schools and enough
community people put down their feet to get rid of the awful politically
correct no-arithmetic math methods promoted by the change agents in the
district and our kids are getting math books that won't get parents screaming
in anger every time they try to comprhend the homework. We need to recognize
when snake oil salesmen promote "change" ann replace people who know
what they are doing with people beholden to whatever the new god-of-reform of
the month is.
| Former fire chief claims race discrimination against WF&R |  |  |  |
Tweet me!| WRITTEN BY DON MANN |
| ShareFormer Woodinville Fire & Rescue chief Ira David Daniels has filed a charge of discrimination against the fire district with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The claim was filed with the EEOC on Sept.9 and received by WF&R on Sept.19. In it, Daniels indicated the alleged discrimination was based on “race” and “retaliation” and included these particulars: “I am employed as fire chief. The last two chiefs were treated more favorably than I am being treated. The previous two chiefs are white.
I am African American. I believe that the fire district is planning to end my contract, or force me to quit, due to my race, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.”
On Aug. 31 the WF&R board of commissioners sent Daniels a “separation agreement” proposal consisting of a six-month severance package including educational benefits not to exceed $9,500, as board chair Tim Osgood noted Daniels was enrolled in a doctoral program that was part of his contract.
On Sunday Osgood said Daniels had not yet accepted the board’s proposal.
Osgood was asked if the board ended his contract because he was African American, as Daniels alleged. “No, absolutely not,” he said.
Were the last two chiefs treated more favorably than Daniels was treated, as alleged?
“No, absolutely not.”
Daniels, whose 19-month tenure as WF&R chief was tumultuous almost from the start in January 2010, was relieved of his duties on August 8 2011, three weeks after the Woodinville firefighters’ union (Local
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Fire
commissioners send former chief a package proposal
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Former fire chief
claims race discrimination against WF&R
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Written by Don Mann
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Share Former Woodinville
Fire & Rescue chief Ira David Daniels has filed a charge of
discrimination against the fire district with the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission.
The claim was filed with the EEOC on Sept.9
and received by WF&R on Sept.19. In it, Daniels indicated the alleged
discrimination was based on “race” and “retaliation” and included these
particulars: “I am employed as fire chief. The last two chiefs were treated
more favorably than I am being treated. The previous two chiefs are white.
I am African American. I believe that the
fire district is planning to end my contract, or force me to quit, due to my
race, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.”
On Aug. 31 the WF&R board of
commissioners sent Daniels a “separation agreement” proposal consisting of a
six-month severance package including educational benefits not to exceed
$9,500, as board chair Tim Osgood noted Daniels was enrolled in a doctoral
program that was part of his contract.
On Sunday Osgood said Daniels had not yet
accepted the board’s proposal.
Osgood was asked if the board ended his
contract because he was African American, as Daniels alleged. “No, absolutely
not,” he said.
Were the last two chiefs treated more
favorably than Daniels was treated, as alleged?
“No, absolutely not.”
Daniels, whose 19-month tenure as WF&R
chief was tumultuous almost from the start in January 2010, was relieved of
his duties on August 8 2011, three weeks after the Woodinville firefighters’
union (Local
2950) delivered a 59-0 vote of “no
confidence” in a resolution.
Previous WF&R chief Dennis Johnson was
fired in June of 2009 and filed a wrongful termination suit against the fire
district a year later.
Asked about the litigation’s current status,
Osgood said the majority of the suit has been dismissed by King County
Superior Court.
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