The ticking of time is the invisible heartbeat of our lives and affects every moment of our consciousness. Time and self are in perpetual handshake – for example, a human trapped in a completely dark cave would still be governed by the circadian rhythms of their internal clocks. There are many careers in which “time” is a critical component. Metrologists have technology that is incredibly accurate to measure the passing of minutes, seconds. Surgeons in an operating room live on a time clock and those who take too long could kill someone. Professional surf boarders must be able to catch the perfect wave and football players have to make the play in a certain space of time or face penalties. Various factors are crucial to our construction of the perception of time such as memory, concentration, emotion and the sense we have time is somehow located in space.
When it comes to the job of a firefighter, time plays a critical component. Imagine your house catching fire, flames coming out of the windows and roof line while you hear loud pop and bang sounds from things exploding inside. As you watch the firefighters attack the house fire, you become almost paralyzed, and time comes to a standstill. As you stand there seeing the chaos around you, it begins to feel like an eternity of time. For the firefighter the stress put on their body fighting your house fire can prompt their brain to speed up its internal processing which helps them face life or death situations.
When the process began to search for a new chief, the firefighters quickly realized the city had an agenda and that former Assistant Fire Chief Lee Glover from the “Un-Happy Days” was about to be their new commanding officer and Chief. The Frisco Firefighters Association did a survey and provided it to the City Manager and Council. In Survey Says we told you about that survey and its results. Question 1: Do you want Interim Fire Chief Glover to be the next Fire Chief of the Frisco Fire Department? Survey says … 92.5% said NO. City Manager Wes Pierson and his office, along with City Council, were given the results and they chose to disregard the voice of some 200+ firefighters and make Lee Glover the new Fire Chief.
When we were reading through the “In-Service Meeting” notes it was noted that firefighters believe it is their Chiefs job to fight for them and defend them but instead they feel Glover ignoring the staffing issues and only doing what is being asked of him by City Manager Wes Pierson. They don’t believe their current leader and Chief supports them in any way and the result is they have no voice with city management and city officials. One comment noted, “we are not being heard and it will take one of them dying before Glover or the city take notice of staffing issues.”
Who is responsible for hiring and firing in the city? Mayor Jeff Cheney addressed this issue in the 2023 Mayoral Campaign at the Star Patriots Candidate Forum. The Council hires the City Manager, and it is the city managers responsibility to manage and hire and fire department heads. If something goes wrong, you can bet Cheney will excuse himself from responsibility and put it all on Wes Pierson.
Another comment from the most recent notes reads, “we work under the fear of retaliation and feel we are disciplined for the simplest mistakes.” We feel like we have heard this before – oh yeah, we have in the 2011 Climate Report when Lee Glover was the Assistant Fire Chief. The 2011 Climate report reads “firefighters talk about getting in trouble for small things and being required to write memos on things they done (and re-writing them over and over until the Senior Officer is happy with it).” It goes on to read “they are being threatened with their job, being moved to the day shift, being belittled, yelled and treated like children.” Proof is in the pudding!
The “In-Service Meeting” notes also address promotions and annual evaluations. Officers feel they meet their rankings, do their job, and then they are told they must do more than that to get to move up. Now the promotional process is based on a “taskbook” which is a checklist that shows what a firefighter or officer understands and has been cleared in, to show they are proficient in the job they will be stepping into. It was recommended by one of the committees to implement the taskbook in 2025. The 50+ pages of notes said some complete the taskbook, but others can be prevented from completing it by the Battalion Chiefs which prevent them from testing. One comment was the process was very “subjective” and “some are allowed to test, while and others are not allowed to test for promotions.” We know from talking to several inside sources that just recently a handful of firefighters applied for the LT positions, and they were not allowed to test even though they qualified which matches the statements made by the firefighters at the meeting. We also learned that Fire Chief Lee Glover choose to ignore his committees (another complaint in the notes) and implement the taskbook requirement now and that did not give all the candidates time to complete it before the test.
After reading this, we honestly feel like we are on a Merry-Go-Round that is not so …merry. We pulled up the 2011 Climate Report that reads “firefighters’ perceptions of the hiring and promotion process is that it is manipulated by the Chief and Senior Officers.” It goes on to read “firefighters would like to see a hiring and promotion process established, published and followed that does not allow for manipulation of the data of tests and who is selected.” So basically, what is in the 2011 Climate Report matches the feelings of the 2024 In-Service Meeting Notes and the one common denominator is … Fire Chief Lee Glover!
We think that City Manager – Wes Pierson, Mayor Jeff Cheney, and the City Council suffer from Echolaia, which is the repetition or echoing of words that you hear someone else say. If not Echolaia, then they suffer from insanity which is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If they don’t have either of those two medical conditions, well then, they suffer from just simple stupidity. Voltaire noted that the more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it appears to be wisdom.
In a nutshell the council hopes we are “STUPID” and if they just repeat the same thing over and over, we will begin to believe it. They are like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ clicking together her ruby red slippers but instead of saying there is no place like home they are saying Chief Glover is the best, Chief Glover is the best! Just look at Mayor Jeff Cheney at the Star Patriot forum in 2023 when he was running for re-election. After seeing the FFA Survey showing a vote of NO CONFIDENCE in the new Fire Chief Lee Glover, he went to a candidate forum and directly lied to our faces talking about how great Glover was and how he was already improving things at the fire department. LET THAT SINK IN FRISCO RESIDENTS: MAYOR CHENEY KNOWINGLY LIED DIRECTLY TO VOTERS and thought he would never get caught.
Remember, the entire goal of the city and its leadership at all levels these past two years has been to blame Piland, blame the power grab on the “small portion of firefighters”, and to blame anyone and everyone but themselves. They have LIED…. and in the most recent election for the propositions the Frisco Fire Association even made a video pointing that out.
The only mistake the City of Frisco and Frisco City Council made was thinking people would not get tired of their BS and start to pay attention. That failure is what allowed the Whistleblowers to rise up!
Imagine it is your first day of work and you arrive at your new office excited to start the day. You have no idea in minutes life is going to change forever but then you hear it, it sounds like an explosion, like a bomb. You open your eyes to see a fireball just passing right beside you. You look around, realize you are trapped, and you stop and think, “I am going to die here today.” You remember praying, “God, I don’t believe you brought me here to die like this.” Then you hear it, the sound of a fire extinguisher and you realize first responders are making their way into the office building. You can’t breathe but know you have to get help, so you reach out through the smoke when you feel a hand on the other side of the smoke. It grabs you and pulls you through the smoke to safety. You quickly “that hand” rescued three people, but you were the only one to survive. This isn’t a story; it is the reality of Sheila Moody who lived through 9/11 at the Pentagon. She learned a plane traveling 530 mph carrying 7000 gallons of fuel crashed into her office and she was one of three to survive out of 46 people in her office.
Now imagine you are at work and just like the rest of America you are glued to the TV watching what is unfolding in New York and DC. The phone rings and you learn as the East Coast Task Force leader for the Federal Urban Search and Rescue System that you are being deployed to the Pentagon. You pack up and head north for a 3-hour drive to D.C. This is what happened to Former Frisco Fire Chief Mark Piland. Now ask yourself, where were you on September 11, 2001? Can you imagine what those first responders saw that day and the days to come? Would you have the guts and emotional stability to do that job? Truthfully I can’t for one moment put myself in the shoes of survivor Sheila Moody or first responders. Men and woman across the country answer the call every day, and in Frisco all they have asked for was more staff and a workers compensation plan with the maximum coverage to protect them. At the last debate, Piland asked a simple question, why would we not want them to have that?
The issue of staffing and workers’ compensation in Frisco goes back many years. At the Star Patriot debate, Piland said the city should support current Texas House Bill 471 which relates to the entitlement to and claims for benefits for certain first responders and other employees related to illness and injury. We thought it was an odd statement because why would the safest city in America, one of the #1 places to live, not have a full coverage workers compensation plan for first responders who answer the call in our city. Also discussed was the NFPA 1710 Safe Staffing Levels for a fire department. Piland said as a city we don’t meet the NFPA 1710 requirement which can potentially put our firefighters and residents in a dangerous position. We are not experts in this field so we had to do a little research to understand the history so we could try to explain it to you. We don’t have a horse in this race, we are not related to anyone who serves as a first responder in Frisco or anywhere else for that matter.
Before we can address the debate issues you need to understand some history. Let’s travel back in time like Marty McFly in our Delorean time machine. Frisco Firefighters have been fighting for years for a full coverage workers comp plan. It appears a written letter dated April 20, 2021, from the city to the state legislators opposed HB 2242 regarding workers compensation for first responders. Mayor Cheney claims the letter was sent by Ben Brezina IN ERROR on May 12 at 11:09 am (even though incorrectly dated earlier) opposing HB 2242 but then a retraction was sent the same day at 11:34 am. The letter had Mayor Jeff Cheney’s electronic signature, yet he claims he never actually saw the letter before it was sent.
That means a letter went to a state agency without first being seen and/or reviewed by several people including the mayor himself. Should we be concerned? Following the unbelievable, absolutely embarrassing so called error the response from the Frisco Fire Fighters Association (FFA) was a letter to Frisco Residents expressing their disappointment that Mayor Cheney, the city and council, attempted to kill house bill 2242 at the State Legislature which would protect first responders across the state. The letter states he did this with no regard for the thousands of police, firefighters and EMS personnel and the families it would protect. It went on to say the mayor has chosen to use his position to help elect a candidate (in reference to Angelia Pelham) that had voluntarily refused to submit a political questionnaire to the FFA. Based on who has endorsed her, and the view expressed toward the FFA they can only assume if elected she would have the same disregard not only for firefighter issues but all First Responders. We also found a letter to one of the fire fighters in the city that had exhausted all their protected leave due to a work-related medical issue. It notified the employees that if their request for accommodation was denied they would have 30-day days to apply for another position in the city or their employment would be terminated.
Question, why would the city ever oppose or stay neutral on a bill for first responders regarding workers compensation? How is a letter sent in error regarding a legislative bill with the mayor’s signature and he does not review that beforehand? Why would we terminate a firefighter for medical leave related to an on-the-job injury/illness, but Ben Brezina can send a letter by ACCIDENT to the State of Texas Legislature and not be fired? Lastly, why was a letter even written in opposition if they never had any intention of taking a position on the bill? The whole think stinks of some Shady Shit and we can understand why Piland took a stance and said the city should endorse the current bill before the State of Texas Legislature it at the debate.
Piland also pointed out that the Frisco Fire Department does not meet the national staffing requirements. He gave an example of mid/high rise building which would national high rise staffing requirement is 43 firefighters, yet Frisco’s response is 25 fire fighters. He also pointed based on a 2000 sq ft home the response should be 17 firefighters and he then asked how many homes in Frisco do you think are under that square footage? Lastly he said most cities have 4-person truck staffing and Frisco only has 3 per truck and typical response times should be 8 min and in some areas of the city we are at 9 minutes.
Cheney said it is the council’s job to hire the city manager and it is the city manager’s job to hire and make sure we are meeting expectations for our departments. Is he saying the reason we are not at full staff is the fault of George Purefoy and Wes Pierson then? He went on to say the city council is aware of what’s going on and that the current interim Chief Glover has done an amazing job. They are in the process of hiring a new fire department chief, but Glover has already raised morale, regained trust and started changing operations. He said it was evident that Glover, Purefoy and Pierson have different philosophies than that of Piland which was evident during his tenure as Fire Chief. Lastly Cheney said the national standards are not specific to any one community. We have had 6 high rise structure fires and the standard calls for 62 firefighters, and we have 75 on for every shift. Lastly Cheney firmly stated “We have what we need.”
In part two we will see, if we have what we need so stay tuned….
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