Mehlville Fire Board Promotes Interim Chief to Lead District

The Mehlville Fire Protection District Board of Directors unanimously voted in a closed session Wednesday to offer interim Fire Chief Brian Hendricks a permanent position as chief.

Hendricks, who has worked for the district for 13 years, accepted the position and said he was excited about the opportunity to formally lead the district. The board named Hendricks interim chief after the .

“I’ve talked to employees who think he’s doing a great job; the board thinks he’s doing a great job and I think if those two people agree to that, then it’s pretty clear,” Board Chairman Aaron Hilmer said.

The board also promoted interim Assistant Chief Dan LaFata to the permanent assistant chief position. LaFata was formerly the district’s Deputy Chief Training Officer.

“We think they’ve done a wonderful job as interim and couldn’t be happier and I think it seems like the staff is very happy too and seem to be working well together and we look forward to continuing that,” said Board Treasurer Bonnie Stegman.

Hendricks said that he would sit down with LaFata to assess the district and outline a course for 2012.

“It’s a great thing because to think that there is no learning curve, there is no him understanding how Mehlville is or more importantly how Mehlville was, and I think Brian and the board are in agreement on what we want Mehlville to be,” Hilmer said.

All fire chiefs in St. Louis County are required to graduate from the St. Louis Fire Academy and Hilmer said that put a limit on looking out of the region for a replacement chief.

“This wasn’t exactly a spur of the moment decision,” he said. “At the time in June, the board wasn’t really sure if we were going to look for a replacement or hire a firm to do a search, so Brian stepped in in the interim and did a great job.”

Hilmer also said the board would wait to decide if they would refill the Deputy Chief Training Officer position.

“By not filling that position, we’ve been able to cut our expenditures some and we know that we’re going to be in a flat revenue environment for several years going forward,” Hilmer said. “We just want to maintain the trajectory that we’re on, there’s no big changes that I see that need to be made."