Valparaiso’s Fire Chief Is Out. Is This A Golden Opportunity?

In Brief:

🚒 Leadership Change: Valparaiso’s independent fire chief, Franks, is no longer contracted by the City due to differing visions for the department’s future.
🔧 Operational Challenges: The department is short-staffed, facing mold issues, and undergoing internal changes including promotions and new leadership under David Lanier.
🤝 Talk of Consolidation: Local leaders are considering merging four nearby fire departments to reduce costs, improve coordination, and reflect the high percentage of medical—not fire—calls.

Valparaiso’s first independent fire chief in half a decade doesn’t work for the City anymore.

Well, technically, Former Fire Chief Charlie Franks (he worked for the City as an employee from 2004-2009) never did. As a contracted consultant, he technically worked for himself – but his services are no longer used by the City.

It’s a turning point in the fire protection service in Valparaiso that might revert the choice to separate from the City of Niceville’s fire protection and could – down the road – lead to consolidation between the four fire departments that are within three miles of each other in the Twin Cities area.

What’s To Be Done?

No matter who is in charge or what the T-shirts look like, the Valparaiso Fire Department has a lot of work to do.

Several firefighters are getting promotions to Lieutenant.

The department also has to contend with a staff shortage, according to Lanier. The shortage means firefighters are required to take on extra duties as well. “everybody has a task. They don’t just come in and do a job as a firefighter, driver, engineer or Lieutenant. They’re tasked with building enemy maintenance. They’re tasked with truck operation. Everyone has their own preference, and there’s too much for one sheet to have to wear. Fire inspections, fire arson investigations, and looking at grants and doing all that kind of stuff,” Lanier summarized.

The City also recently paid for the remediation of mold in the firehouse to the tune of $100,000 – but fire department staff continue to report new spores in the building.

Despite the shortages he mentioned, Lanier boasted that they are responding to 98.2% of the calls they are asked to attend.

An Opportunity For Unification of the Fire Departments in Central Okaloosa County.

There have been four different fire fiefdoms within three miles of one another for decades in the Niceville area.

Niceville FD, East Niceville FD, Valparaiso FD, and The North Bay Fire Control District have had their own chiefs and elected boards they answer to since what seems like time immemorial.

Even while the Niceville Fire Department Chief was technically the Chief of the Valparaiso Fire Department, they were, on paper, two separate departments.

However, Niceville City Manager David Deitch says this year presents a unique opportunity. Deitch notes that instability in Valparaiso, Niceville Fire Chief Mayville’s retirement in July of 2025, and rumors that David Birch may soon retire as well mean that the time of fiefdoms may come to an end in the fire protection world – if power brokers along the middle section of Okaloosa County see it fit to work together and save the taxpayers some money.

“I think it’s a good idea [to merge departments into a single one] because it would reduce taxes, as opposed to having four independent, four independent fire districts for independent taxing authorities that are providing the exact same service three miles apart, it would be one,” Deitch argued, “it’d be under one leader who could, who could solidify training, standard operating procedures, things of that nature. So everybody’s trained the same. They’re operating the same. And we could spread that service out, put the equipment in place, and instead of everybody buying their own equipment and doubling or tripling the cost, we could do it more efficiently. What we actually need in this area, we could, we could buy equipment designed specifically for a particular area.”

In his mind, having the department under the Niceville City banner makes the most sense overall and for the residents he serves.

“It’s two different municipalities and two different fire districts that are controlled by independent boards, and so it’s the ability to control spending. It’s the ability to focus the training on the stuff that we actually need. And again, it’s in its consolidation. Maybe we don’t need some of these stuff that we have because, you know, there’s two or three of a certain kind of truck, and we only need one or two. Because what we really need most of the calls in Niceville, and this is, this is consistent across fire departments, most of the calls that we run here in Niceville, and it’s probably 95% or more, are medical emergency calls. They’re not fires. And so being able to limit the number of or strategically buy and maintain Fire Department equipment that we need in the event a fire actually happens, but more importantly, we can focus the resources on less expensive equipment and train people for those medical calls, which, again, is the overwhelming majority of calls.”