Interim chief choice another snag for fire department

The Grafton Police and Fire Commission was to meet in closed session Monday to consider appointing an interim chief of the Ozaukee Central Fire Department, but that didn’t happen.

That’s because one of the four municipalities that are part of the fire department — the villages and towns of Grafton and Saukville — has raised questions about whether the commission has the authority to make the appointment, Commission Chairman Paul Moroder said Tuesday. He declined to identify the municipality that raised the questions.

And an appointment is of some urgency, since Fire Chief Bill Rice is retiring on March 13. An interim chief was expected to take the helm while a search for a new chief was undertaken.

But given the questions that were raised, Moroder said, “just out of caution we said let’s stop what we’re doing and make sure we are all on the same page.”

Moroder said the issue at hand has its roots in the fact that when the fire department was formed a year ago, its employees became Village of Grafton hires.

“This structure, including the delegation of oversight responsibilities to the Village of Grafton, is expressly acknowledged” in the department agreement signed by the municipalities and dated Dec. 2, 2024, he said in a statement.

While the fire department was to take over the hiring this year, that’s been delayed until next year, Moroder said.

But given the fact questions have been raised about who has the authority to hire an interim chief, he said, the decision was made to take no action for now.

“Given the questions raised regarding jurisdiction and the statutory implications ... it is prudent for the commission to refrain from taking further action affecting the joint fire department until written confirmation is received from or on behalf of all four participating municipalities affirming this body possesses jurisdictional authority,” according to the statement by Moroder.

Otherwise, according to the statement, “actions of the commission relating to the joint fire department — including but not limited to discipline, hiring, the appointment of an interim fire chief or the initiation of a process to appoint a permanent fire chief — may be subject to challenge.”

“The attorneys are looking at it now,” Moroder said.

This is just the latest growing pain for a department that’s only a year old.

The Town of Grafton recently objected to the 2026 budget, urging other communities to follow its lead and limit their contributions.

Grafton village officials agreed to provide the funding allocation originally budgeted, but many noted that the disagreement points to the need to amend the intergovernmental agreement that established the department. That agreement states, in part, that if any one of the four municipalities that make up the department fails to adopt the budget by Dec. 1, the previous year’s budget stands — a clause that allowed the budget dispute.

The department was created when the Grafton and Saukville fire departments merged, a move that formally joined the two departments that had been led by Rice for several years.

Rice announced last month that he would retire in March, noting he had planned from the start of the joint department to serve a year to get the new department up and running and then retire.