THE SPECTATOR: SETTLING WITH THE FIRE CHIEF
The abrupt firing of Brenham Fire Chief Ricky Boeker by City Manager James Fisher is going to cost the City and its taxpayers’ money. How much money is yet to be determined, as the City Council will meet with Chief Boeker’s attorney in an executive session behind closed doors this Wednesday. Boeker was fired by Fisher on April 6th when he did not accept the City’s terms for his early retirement. From the documents received by KWHI as a result of our Freedom of Information Request, it appears that on March 15th of this year, the date of Boeker’s 2nd annual review with Fisher since Fisher became City Manager, Boeker was informed that he was being dismissed and offered terms for an early retirement. Boeker’s only other review by Fisher in 2019 speaks of him in glowing terms and calls him “a valued team member whose contributions to the success of the organization are immeasurable”.
In explaining Boeker’s dismissal, Fisher pointed out a number of issues with the Fire Department and said he had discussed these problems with Boeker numerous times over the past couple of years. KWHI followed up on that claim by Fisher in our request to see the contents of Boeker’s employee file. As an employer I know that you should always document conversations and meetings with employees when you discuss their performance, or problems with their job. As a government employee, Fisher should certainly know that. However, there is little to no documentation in Boeker’s file about conversations, meetings or memos between Fisher and Boeker concerning problems with his performance. The first such documentation is dated March 15th of this year, the day of his review and notification of dismissal.
There may be very good reasons for Fisher to decide to replace Boeker as Brenham’s Fire Chief. They’re just not apparent in his employee file. From what we do know, I believe this is another situation that has been handled poorly by our City Manager. Someone who chose to fly out of town right before a well-forecasted winter storm of the century hit Brenham, which put his employees into crisis mode.
And that’s the way it looks to this Spectator.