Florida Chief Disciplined For Lack of Candor

A Florida fire chief is in hot water after his boss accused him of not being fully candid over the department’s need for its own training facility.

Leesburg Fire Chief Kevin Bowman has been suspended for five days and placed on probation for six months.  The chief allegedly told city officials that the department needs its own training facility when a county facility was available.

According to Leesburg spokesman Robert Sergeant “It was expressed certain training takes a large number of hours, so it would be easier to do that training without having to take them out of the area and pay overtime.” Interim City Manager Ray Sharp claims the chief neglected to mention that Lake County Fire Rescue had a training facility available nearby for their use.

According to city officials, construction on the Leesburg training facility had already started at a location more distant than the county’s training center. Sharpe ordered construction stopped, and told Chief Bowman in writing "Your desire for your own facility likely overtook your normal good judgment and served you badly."

Just to clarify – the training facility at issue is not a conventional live-burn building, but rather consists of a series of used conex boxes costing approximately $32,000. For any non-firefighters reading this, a real training facility with live burn capabilities costs more in the range of $2-4 million. $32,000 will get you… well… a bunch of used conex boxes that can be used for some evolutions… the type of economical facility that would be fine for a small fire department’s in house training but not much more.