News

Alaska Borough Skips Process, Hires New EMS Director

Zaz Hollander

04/17/2015

April 17—WASILLA—The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has filled its top emergency position without advertising the job or interviewing other candidates.

The borough announced this week that West Lakes Fire Chief Bill Gamble, a longtime local responder who rose through the ranks, will become the new director of the Department of Emergency Services on Monday.

Gamble was named acting director in early April after former director Dennis Brodigan resigned, citing personal reasons. Brodigan's last day was April 1.

Gamble comes on board at a turbulent time: The Mat-Su's top three EMS officials earlier this month resigned or were fired after a union complaint about leadership issues.

Borough Manager John Moosey credited Gamble's stability and leadership. He said he opted to forgo normal hiring practices because of the immediate need to fill the director position given the recent upheavals.

"I decided that our interview and hiring process was not the best choice for this specific appointment," Moosey said in an email Thursday.

The borough will go through the normal process to fill Gamble's chief position, he said.

Borough officials didn't respond to requests for the amount of the new director's salary.

The director supervises more than 530 fire, rescue and ambulance responders—most of them paid on-call volunteers—in a borough the size of Ireland with a growing population. There's talk of shifting to more full-time responders or firefighters also trained as EMTs.

Gamble, an on-call responder since 1990 and chief since 2003, is said to be respected among rank-and-file responders and helped combine the Meadow Lakes and Big Lake departments in 2007. He worked as a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controller for 26 years, according to a borough news release.

Gamble said Thursday that he's excited to bring his fire experience and "hands-on" philosophy to the job.

"I'm just a down-to-earth, blue-collar, let's-roll-up-our-sleeves-and-find-the-problem kind of guy," he said. "My record stands for me."

One of Gamble's priorities is adding more full-time paramedics and EMTs to normalize ambulance staffing schedules amid an hours cap for on-call responders that's leading to "enormous amounts" of overtime for full-time paramedics. He also needs to fill the position vacated by the resignation of the borough's former EMS deputy director, Clint Vardeman, and the termination of Brian Wallace, EMS chief of operations in the core area.

Gamble called Brodigan a "great mentor" who was instrumental in merging the Big Lake and Meadow Lakes departments.

Gamble's challenges include an ongoing lawsuit filed by responders asking for benefits owed them and a 29.9-hour cap on paid, on-call responders to keep them under the 30-hour window where public employee retirement benefits and federal health care may have kicked in.