With numerous upcoming retirements creating vacancies throughout the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department, Chief Tom Greif said he wants to organize the department's administrative structure.

The cost of doing so is at least $56,000, officials said.

Greif discussed the matter with the General Services Committee on Monday afternoon and spoke to The Press about his objectives Tuesday. 

“Our main goal of this project was to fill a vacant EMS Officer position, which oversees our EMS Division,” Greif said. “It’s been vacant since July of last year, since he went back to the line on the fire engine after the Canfield incident.” 

Greif said the department started reevaluating the EMS position, which held the rank of captain, and felt it needed to be at the chief level due to the job description, the essential functions required and the responsibilities associated with the position.

“We started looking at that in August and September, and then all the retirements started happening,” Greif said. “I’m leaving in April, our deputy chief of operations' last day is Friday, and our deputy chief of training is leaving in July.” 

Greif said he expects more vacancies, so he thought it was prudent to review the organizational structure to see where improvements could be made. 

“I didn’t want, as an outgoing chief, to kick the can down the road and give the new chief a scenario that he or she will have to fix in a year or two,” Greif said. “So, I thought we should examine the whole upper chief structure and make a better model.” 

Greif got together with union officials, reached out to other fire chiefs in the region and then proposed a model that includes a fire chief and an assistant chief, which the department doesn't currently have. 

“We really don’t have a clear chain of command right now, so we’ve created a level of division chiefs instead of calling them deputies,” Greif said. “We also have two deputy fire marshals who don’t supervise each other, so we’re looking to make one the fire marshal and the other a deputy fire marshal.” 

Greif said he presented the new administrative structure to the city administrator and union representatives, and all said it was a model that would work.

Financial Director Katie Ebner said the cost of reorganizing the fire department's structure may be higher than $56,000.

“There could be some ongoing costs that are personnel-related,” she said. 

She added that the money from the city’s budget to finance the fire department’s reorganization will not affect the savings the city will gain from early retirees through the city's buyout plan, which is expected to save more than $200,000 in the first three years.

“The opportunity to do the restructuring is here because of the early retirement, but this is separate from the cost savings from the early retirement,” Ebner said.