Prevent Your Own Fires

In 1958, the Village established the Bureau of Fire Prevention which enforces the policies of the Fire Prevention Code.  In September of 2017, the Village parted ways with the Fire Inspector Rick Musil.  The village president at the time, Thomas Heller and Mark Masciola agreed to hire a replacement.  Heller wanted to have someone currently on staff to take on that role. The problem was no one on staff held the qualifications.  Even though several members of the fire department were interested in getting trained for the role, Heller and Masciola refused to invest in these individuals.

So to save the village $3, 000, Tom Heller and Mark Masciola let the Village go more than a year without a Certified Fire Inspector.

Now as we all know, Thomas Heller moved himself from that Village President seat to Chief of the Fire Department.  Looks like he fixed that fire inspector problem since he is a fire inspector. But the question is, how good of an inspector is he? Our friends over in Stickney didn’t have many nice things to say about Heller’s abilities and knowledge of Fire Prevention. 

If the hearsay isn’t convincing enough, go see for yourself and ask any firefighter who works for Thomas Heller. No one wants to work for Heller.  It has gotten so bad that the firefighters have recently requested a meeting with the village trustees to discuss Heller’s incompetence and his inability to fill shifts.  That meeting has not taken place yet, but we are very interested to see what the village will do… probably nothing. The village board still hired Heller as a fire chief even though they were well aware of his poor employment history.  Just like they hired Gary Wiseman with his checkered employment past. Who can forget that Public Works guy they hired without a background check?

Powell and Friends continue to flush the community down the toilet.