The Beverly Hills City Council unanimously sided with Fire Department management over the union representing firefighters on Jan. 11 in a dispute regarding the creation of Assistant Fire Chief positions and the process of recruiting people into leadership.
Creating the positions allows two largely administrative roles previously shared between battalion chiefs on a rotating basis—Fire Marshal and Training Officer—to become permanent assignments. The move was opposed by the Beverly Hills Firefighters’ Association (BHFA), which argued that adding assistant chiefs to the agency’s hierarchy could make it harder for current BHFA members to move up in the department.
