sugg head: Martin offered fire chief job
By Jeffrey Pieters
jpieters@postbulletin.com
Rochester will offer its fire chief job to the top-rated candidate.
Greg Martin, currently the chief in Sioux City, Iowa, will be offered the job today.
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If he accepts — and he told the Post-Bulletin as recently as Friday that he would — he will be asked to start May 5.
Martin is a former deputy chief in the Rochester Fire Department. He worked 10 years as fire chief in Lansing, Mich., before taking the Sioux City job two years ago.
Martin came out on top in a nationwide search to replace former Rochester chief David Kapler, who retired last year. Kapler went on to take the fire chief’s job in Alameda, Calif.
Six candidates — none local — interviewed.
The council voted 6-0 for Martin. Council member Pat Carr abstained, in protest that the candidates’ interviews were held privately, and not publicly.
Roger Field, secretary of the three-member Fire Civil Service Commission, which recommended Martin, said that the interviewing and scoring process that the commission adopted to evaluate job candidates "removes bias." The evaluative process was praised by outside observers, he said.
