The Public Safety Committee discussed a resolution to reinstate the title of Police Chief and abolish the title of Director of Public Safety during Monday’s committee meeting. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

Since 2002, the titles of police chief and fire chief have fallen under the purview of one administrative position, the Director of Public Safety.

With the recent retirement of Timothy Jackson, police chief and city public safety director, the retirement of Matthew Coon, fire chief, back in May, the City Council is now looking at a resolution to reinstate the separate title of police cChief and abolish the director of public safety position.

A resolution was looked at and approved by the Public Safety Committee at Monday’s meeting, similar to the one that was approved early last year to reinstate the fire chief title prompted by Coon’s retirement. The police chief title was never abolished, it just has not officially been used since 2002, and Councilman Tony Dolce, R-Ward 2 and chair of the Public Safety Committee, said the resolution up for approval by the council will change things back to how they were before the director of public safety position was created.

“This changes back to what it was 20 some years ago when we went from a police chief to Director of Public Safety, so now we’re going back to having a specific position of police chief and fire chief,” Dolce said. “Again, there were reasons behind that in years past, why we did that, and there’s some financial aspects to that but again this will be putting it back to similar to what it was before back in the early 2000s.”

The resolution for this change was approved by the Public Safety Committee, and will be read at this month’s voting session, but then will be tabled for official approval by the whole council until March.

The resolution was briefly brought up again at the full City Council work session. Dolce added a bit more to the history of the decision, saying that the Director of Public Safety used to include the Police Chief position and would have administrative coverage over both police and fire departments. With the change back, the Police Chief salary will no longer encompass the stipend for Director of Public Safety as there will now be a Police Chief and a separate Fire Chief, responsible for their respective departments, resulting in some cost savings for the city as well.

“There’s some cost savings to that, including the way salaries are and things like that,” Dolce said. “Because it’s a local law, it will be read in for the record in two weeks, automatically tabled for a month and then voted on in the March session unless there’s a letter of necessity from the mayor.”