Paris fire chief Larry Wright is taking a step this week toward increasing the number of minority firefighters in the department.
Among the items before the Civil Service Commission at its annual meeting on Wednesday is Wright’s recommendation to remove the requirement that Paris firefighters live within 30 minutes of the town square.
Fire Chief Larry Wright
The Civil Service Commission will meet at 3:30 p.m.in the first-floor conference room of City Hall, 135 SE 1st St.
In a mid-December interview with eParisExtra, Wright targeted that rule as one of his first targets in trying to improve the department.
“That’s a rule established years ago, I guess right after the big tornado, that required firefighters to live within 30 minutes of the town square. That’s a stumbling block. It limits your ability to recruit,” Wright said.
“You know, firemen work 24 hours on, 48 hours off, so it’s nothing for them to drive 50 or 75 miles to work, because they only do it one day out of three. With this rule, if we recruit a firefighter from Sherman-Denison area, they’d have to move over here, and the money we pay a beginning firefighter, a lot of times it’s not incentive to move over here,” he said.
There is a reason for the rule, agreed Wright, who is in his second month as the city’s fire chief, following Ronnie Grooms’ retirement.
“If you have a big fire, you want to be able to call extra help in and for them to respond quickly,” Wright said.
But he noted that he is also pushing mutual aid agreements with the county’s voluntary fire departments and even other cities.
That will ensure than the Paris Fire Department has more people involved, should the city be visited by a crisis that requires lots of emergency personnel in a hurry.
“I think there are enough firefighters and police officers that live in this area, and with mutual aid like I was talking about, we could afford to drop that rule,” Wright said.
Just about every other fire department has dropped that rule, but it remains on the books in Paris.
“IIf I can get that rule changed, I’m going to try to have some brochures made up and do some kind of recruiting spin out around Kilgore, Sulphur Springs, and probably in the edge of the Metroplex to see if we can draw some people in here – including blacks, Hispanics and females — to test. They’re out there; you’ve just got to go look for them,” Wright said.
By CHARLES RICHARDS
eParisExtra
Charles Richards Charles Richards moved to Paris in 2004 after retiring from a 40-year career in journalism – the last 26 years as a news writer and sports writer with The Associated Press in Dallas and Washington, D.C. In mid-2004, The Paris News coaxed him out of retirement, and he began covering the police, court and regional beat for The Paris News. Then in early 2005, he was switched to coverage of a sharply divided Paris City Council. He was appointed by the City Council in 2006 to the 12-member City Charter Review Commission, which extensively rewrote the outmoded document. His writing awards include two first-place awards in statewide competition for feature writing. The most recent was his 2005 story on a Paris doctor’s startling use of leeches in a successful attempt to re-attach a man’s severed ear. Over his career, Richards’ interview subjects include Alabama Gov. George Wallace, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, David Koresh, Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali and numerous other political and sports figures. He is an alumnus of Texas Tech, where he was editor of the school newspaper. He lives in Paris with his wife, Barbara, who is retired after 30 years as a teacher and high school counselor.
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