Coeur d’Alene fire chief proposes restructuring amid mass retirements

Coeur d’Alene’s fire department is moving to reorganize its upper leadership as a wave of retirements creates immediate vacancies and raises questions about continuity for emergency medical services. Chief Tom Greif says the principal aim is to fill a vacant EMS Officer role and to create a clearer chain of command for the coming year.

“Our main goal of this project was to fill a vacant EMS Officer position, which oversees our EMS Division,” Greif said. “It’s been vacant since July of last year, since he went back to the line on the fire engine after the Canfield incident.” The position previously carried the rank of captain; department leaders have reevaluated the role and concluded it needs to be elevated to the chief level because of the job description, essential functions and responsibilities involved.

Greif outlined the timing pressure driving the change. “We started looking at that in August and September, and then all the retirements started happening,” he said. “I’m leaving in April, our deputy chief of operations' last day is Friday, and our deputy chief of training is leaving in July.” With those departures imminent, he says the department must prepare an organizational model that will serve the next chief rather than leaving them to fix gaps left by staggered exits. “I didn’t want, as an outgoing chief, to kick the can down the road and give the new chief a scenario that he or she will have to fix in a year or two,” Greif said. “So, I thought we should examine the whole upper chief structure and make a better model.”

The proposed structure would create a fire chief and an assistant chief position, add division chiefs in place of deputies, and reorganize the fire marshal office so that one deputy becomes the fire marshal and the other serves as deputy fire marshal. Greif said he consulted union officials, regional chiefs and the city administrator, and that union representatives agreed the model would work. “We really don’t have a clear chain of command right now, so we’ve created a level of division chiefs instead of calling them deputies,” he said. “We also have two deputy fire marshals who don’t supervise each other, so we’re looking to make one the fire marshal and the other a deputy fire marshal.”

City Financial Director Katie Ebner said the immediate cost of implementing the reorganization is at least $56,000, and warned there could be additional ongoing personnel costs. “There could be some ongoing costs that are personnel-related,” she said. Ebner also stressed the reorganization expense is separate from savings the city expects from an early retirement buyout plan, which is projected to save more than $200,000 in the first three years. “The opportunity to do the restructuring is here because of the early retirement, but this is separate from the cost savings from the early retirement,” she said.

For Coeur d’Alene residents the stakes are practical: stable EMS oversight and a functional command structure help sustain response reliability during a period of turnover. The General Services Committee is reviewing the proposal this week, and final budget approval will determine whether the plan moves forward.

Our two cents? Watch upcoming committee meetings and ask how the reorganization will be measured against response times and training continuity—those are the clearest ways to see whether the investment pays off for downtown, midtown and outlying neighborhoods.