Folks there is reality and then there is reality. Reading Rich Rainey’s 2:36PM story on the firing of East Bank Fire Chief Paul Smith you’d think Young just made up his mind on this and really does not have anyone in mind to replace Smith, the guy who did the repair job in the aftermath of a Deano Bonano’s hatch job on the department for those of you keeping score. (Whew that was a mouthful!)
I’m a Mississippi guy and over here we like our fire personnel to be trained and professional. Not that long ago for example the City of Gulfport hired a new Chief whose credentials speak for themselves. There are just some jobs where politics should be kept to a bare minimum IMHO.
Here at Slabbed we’ve known that Mr Smith was a dead man walking literally for a month, maybe more in fact and that his replacement is Joe Greco, a Young campaign supporter who was hired because he was a Young campaign supporter. Greco reportedly has harbored fantasies of being the fire chief for quite some time. This gives him something in common with my then 3 year old son, who would watch one of his big trucks videos and then run around the house with his fire hat on singing the words in title of this post.
2 other staffers that I will not name also got the axe today as well.
Something tells me the firefighters union won’t be real happy with this turn of events.
I now return you to our regular programming.
sop