Patterson Fire Association announces vote of no confidence against fire chief
PATTERSON – The Patterson Fire Association took to social media Tuesday night sharing they conducted a vote of no confidence against their Fire Chief Jeff Frye.
The Association said that despite the vote happening back in August, they waited to announce it for several months.
"We tried working with the mayor," Patterson Fire Association President-Elect Mike Huggins said. "He wanted us to, you know not go public and not broadcast it. And then he didn't even contact us back for multiple weeks. I mean weeks and weeks. I tried reaching out to him, he wouldn't contact me back. That's finally when we had to take it to the City Manager."
The association wrote a letter to Patterson's mayor and city manager back in June.
In that letter, they listed multiple failures from Chief Frye, which included low firefighter morale, last-minute schedule changes, members looking to leave and instances where the union had to hire attorneys to fight Chief Frye's violations of California state labor law.
In a statement to CBS13 the city of Patterson said in part, "After several months of working through various concerns raised by the Union, City management concluded that the complaints lacked merit," and, "Despite this finding, the City Manager has hired a neutral third-party agency to perform an assessment of the Union's concerns".
Patterson Mayor Michael Clauzelalso made a statement saying in part, "Since this matter was first brought to my attention, the City has allocated resources and staff time to address the Union's concerns. Any allegation that we have done anything less than that is entirely untrue."
All of the Patterson Fire Association signed off on the vote of no confidence against Frye. Huggins said they will meet with a third party to discuss further steps on Tuesday.
