Hazard appoints new assistant city manager and fire chief
Tim Caldwell moves to assistant city manager as Hazard fills its fire chief post. The change touches a department that protects about 7,000 residents and nearly 30,000 daytime workers.
Hazard has moved Tim Caldwell into the assistant city manager job and selected a new fire chief, a shift that reaches from city hall operations to emergency response in Perry County. The promotions put two of the city’s most important management posts in new hands as Hazard continues to juggle daily services, infrastructure needs and public safety demands.
Caldwell’s move is especially significant because it comes out of the Hazard Fire Department, where leadership decisions affect response readiness as much as administration. The department was founded in 1884, holds an ISO rating of four and protects about 7,000 full-time residents and nearly 30,000 people during workday business hours. It has 17 full-time firefighters and 29 paid on-call firefighters, and among its 46 firefighters are seven trained paramedics and 22 Emergency Medical Technicians. The department also has six State Fire Rescue Instructors and 11 certified instructors, giving the top fire job an outsized role in training and day-to-day readiness.
That matters in Hazard, where the fire department has been tied to other city problems, not just structure fires and rescue calls. In January 2024, more than 2,000 customers were left without water, and fire crews reached out for outside help so the system would not be depleted. The shortage highlighted how closely emergency service, utility capacity and city infrastructure can overlap in a community served by an aging water system built in 1949.
The assistant city manager post is no less important inside city government. It typically involves helping the city manager and mayor coordinate departments, budgets, personnel matters, grants, infrastructure planning and communications with county and state partners. Hazard has gone through leadership changes before. The City Commission voted in 2017 to remove city manager Grady Varney, and Tony Eversole was appointed city manager in July 2021 after Derrick Hall retired. A report at the time said Eversole had been filling in as city manager when Hall was absent, underscoring how closely local officials watch changes at the top of city hall.
Hazard has also tried to modernize how it communicates with residents. In 2025, city officials announced a new GOGov-powered app to streamline news, events and citizen information. With fire protection, utility stability and routine city operations all under pressure, the newest appointments will be measured by how quickly they settle in and how smoothly those systems run.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
