Former chief Jim Wilson and Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR) settled their disagreement about severance pay on Tuesday, March 11, when Wilson signed an agreement to pay the department $19,950.
By last Wednesday, acting chief Mike Kirk said, the check had been received and deposited. He made a formal report about the matter at last Tuesday’s board of commissioners meeting.
VIFR claimed that last March, Wilson, who was let go in April 2006, was discovered to have broken his severance agreement by taking a job without telling officials at the fire department.
The 12-month agreement, which was signed on April 3, 2006, required Wilson to notify VIFR of any employment he took up after leaving the department.
If Wilson’s pay at his new job met or exceeded the amount VIFR had agreed to pay him in severance through September last year, according to the agreement, the Vashon fire department would no longer be required to continue monthly severance payments to Wilson.
That, Kirk said, was what happened.
Wilson, according to the Vashon fire department’s internal documents, began employment as chief of Mariposa County fire department in California in mid-January, 2007. During that employment and through April, 2007, VIFR paid Wilson $29,583 of which only $4,915 was actually owed because Wilson was employed at Mariposa.
That left Wilson owing $24,777.
The VIFR board, after much back and forth with Wilson about how much he was willing to pay in a settlement before going to arbitration, decided it could accept $20,000, Kirk said — an amount that would have saved the board the significant cost of going to court.
But Wilson objected to that number, so the board came back with $19,950, and Wilson accepted.
Keith Yamane, who replaced Wilson as chief, accidentally discovered in March 2007, that Wilson had a new job. According to Joe Quinn, VIFR’s lawyer, a firefighter in the Mariposa department called to inquire about Vashon’s volunteer practices. When asked why he was calling Vashon, the firefighter said that his chief, Jim Wilson, had recommended it.
