City Government
Fire Chief Choice Ignites Councilors
November 5, 2020 
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean made a point of using buzzwords like “transparency, listening, community outreach,” and similar terms when she took office in January.
Now, 11 months later, when it came to naming a new fire chief to head a department with a $57,000,000 budget, she not only failed to allow citizens to be involved with the selection process, she denied the city’s governing body–the City Council–a chance to weigh in on the selection of Mark Niemeyer to head the Boise Fire Department. Niemeyer has experience as the Meridian fire chief and as an Ada County emergency medical staffer.
To be perfectly honest, the Boise FD is in need of an outsider who is capable of taking the helm of a $57 million organization. The firefighting abilities of a chief are actually incidental to running the department. An operations deputy can easily be appointed or promoted from within.
We have plenty of competent firefighters serving the community. However, the budget-busting history of outside contracts, failure to maintain existing stations, building new stations, and construction of a training facility have left the department in disarray.
Boise needs an outsider chief who is well grounded in fleet management, union negotiations, personnel management, facilities construction, financial contracts (and law), and even politics.
BoiseDev has a good story on the CHIEF APPOINTMENT.
The GUARDIAN has it from the inside just like BoiseDev and there is a chance the Councilors will seek to reopen the selection process at the next meeting.
Recruitment Brochure-Boise-Fire-Chief
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Comments & Discussion
Comments are closed for this post.
Nov 5, 2020, 6:00 pm
Marxist McLean is backtracking politically with the local fire chief decision after a disastrous pick of a police chief from the town of a thousand violent riots.
Having on-the-ground knowledge is critical in a CEO level roll. Look at bean counters made CEOs that turned into disasters like Microsoft’s Balmer and Costco’s Jelinek. Things slid for a long time until their years of bad decisions came to light.
If you want a project to do well then the mayor needs to put their foot down on budget overruns from the start. Then appoint a good Project Manager to run each individual project.
Nov 5, 2020, 10:06 pm
Now the Council gets a first hand experience of what the citizens have faced on a regular basis.
Nov 6, 2020, 6:36 am
Bust the union.
Nov 6, 2020, 7:47 am
Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are thou, for another while anyway?
Nov 8, 2020, 1:42 pm
Other story content on this potential Boise fire chief has mentioned that he did not wish to live in Boise. Although there is no law that can require the person in charge of a city department to actually live within the given city they are employed by, when not doing so, one is removed from the impact of their budgetary actions and decisions. This results in a person not having to eat their own cooking.
EDITOR NOTE–You are correct about the LAW, but it has been a POLICY for many years that department heads live within the city limits. We agree with your reasoning.
Nov 10, 2020, 11:49 pm
“Politically astute, without being politically active “
Is that a direct shot at Doan or what? Hysterical.
Nov 13, 2020, 5:18 pm
I think Lauren is more pretentious than Marxist. Council member Lisa hit the nail on the head with her reply!
Our tax dollars pay for qualified public servants, working together, for the betterment of the community?!
I think it is great to promote from within a company.
As a tax payer I expect appointments based on qualification vs direction from the local union or political contributors!