BRENHAM FIRE CHIEF SEEKING POTENTIAL LEGAL ACTION AGAINST CITY

  

Brenham Fire Chief Ricky Boeker is preparing to take possible legal action against the City of Brenham.

City Manager James Fisher informed KWHI that Boeker has retained legal counsel with the intent of taking action against the city.  Boeker confirmed that he is being represented by Andrew Scott with Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP out of Houston.

This comes after Boeker was informed on March 15^th that the city would be moving in a different direction with leadership and pursuing early retirement options with him.  Boeker’s daughter, Amanda Landry, released a statement Saturday explaining the situation from her perspective, while Fisher put out a statement Monday giving his reasoning for the city’s decision.

Landry says Fisher did not give a specific reason for the city’s decision to move on from Boeker, and believes Boeker did not get the “fairy tale ending” he deserves after over 30 years of service with the fire department.  Meanwhile, Fisher says “critical issues” surrounding fire department operations were brought up with Boeker several times during discussions with him over the past few years, and feels the fire department needed a new leader to “move the department forward to meet the expectations of a growing community.”

KWHI provided a list of questions to Fisher on Monday in response to a memo sent to Boeker on March 15^th, detailing Boeker’s annual review.  Specifically, KWHI asked when Boeker was informed of the city’s intent to move on, if Fisher is seeking to add more paid firefighters to staff, what forms of training exercises are done for city firefighters, if funding to replace several Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) tanks was requested by the fire department but not included in the city’s final budget, and who is the source of two quotes he references in the memo that say “If downtown catches fire, we will set up defensive position and watch it burn, trying to prevent it from spreading” and “we are a one incident department.”

While Boeker was able to answer our question on when he was notified by the city of its intentions, Fisher said that as Boeker is seeking legal action, the city “will have no further comment regarding this issue.”  KWHI does not believe the answers to these questions should be withheld for legality reasons, and contacted City Attorney Cary Bovey for clarification.

Update @ 6:35 a.m. Wednesday:  Bovey said once the city received the notice of representation from Boeker’s attorney Monday afternoon, he advised the city manager and other city officials to “not comment any further about this matter, either directly or indirectly,” for the purpose of protecting client interests.  KWHI has asked the city for the contents of Boeker’s personnel file, as most of it is considered public information.

KWHI has also reached out to Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani to obtain any court documents if and when they are filed.