Meeting with some Woodway volunteers

Today new Council member and Mayor pro tem Gil Lillard and I met with five of the Woodway volunteer police and/or firefighters to discuss concerns and perspectives, and to see the facilities and equipment. The five volunteers were:

Lieutenant Bert Hernandez (police and fire)

Lieutenant Ben Selman (police and fire)

Colonel Warney Crosby (volunteer firefighter of the year, 2009)

Captain Norm Burgess (firefighter)

Lieutenant Ray Dobbs (police and fire)

We talked about the Woodway volunteer system, and how all police officers are cross-trained as firefighters to improve response times (a great idea). A total of 90 hours of training are required before being allowed to fight actual fires, and only about 25% of those who begin training are able to complete the requirements.

The real heart of the meeting was to discuss the effect of two things on the morale of the Public Safety Department. These were:

(a) Mike O'Bric's allegations against the Police Chief/City Manager Yost Zakhary, and sometimes directly against certain officers or situations;

and

(b) A rumor that the new City Council members would decrease the number of patrol officers in Woodway, or otherwise fail to support the Public Safety Department.

I was glad to be able to unequivocally debunk the rumor. To my knowledge there has not been any discussion or even a hint of decreasing support for the Woodway Public Safety Department among the new Council members. It seems to me that the new Council members value the Woodway police and fire personnel at least as much as anyone else that has ever been on the Council. We later met Corporal Nolan Schaffer, and Gil quickly assured him that there was no truth to the rumor and to spread the word.

As far as the allegations, some of the officers very credibly explained the context of some of the situations they had personal knowledge of. It is apparent that at least some of the many allegations are based on distortions of the facts. Another allegation I heard somewhere was that the largest firetruck could not fit into the garage, but Gil and I saw otherwise. We toured the facilities and were even given a ride on the big ladder truck, which DOES fit on Woodway streets, in case you had heard otherwise.

The officers spent about 4 hours with us, and they are as passionate and sincere about their duties as anyone could be, even though their positions are unpaid. Woodway is very fortunate to have dedicated personnel of this caliber. I was honored to meet them and am honored to serve as one of their City Council members.