The board of the Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue District in Waldport voted unanimously Thursday night to negotiate a separation agreement with Fire Chief Gary Woodson, who has been on paid leave since mid-December.
Woodson, 60, has been the fire chief since March 2018. Originally from Missouri, he was chief of the Pendleton Fire Department for four years before resigning abruptly in April 2014. He worked for the Oregon Department of Corrections before becoming Waldport’s chief.
The vote followed an hour-long online executive session where board members heard its attorney walk through an outside consultant’s report on what a district spokesman previously said was an “internal investigation” of Woodson.
The public is not allowed to attend executive sessions; the media can – but just not report what it heard. Any action must take place in public session, which the board did when it authorized chair Tim Grady to negotiate the agreement with Woodson.
Woodson and the department are the subject of a $1.11 million civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District court by Nestor Alves, who was a captain in the department for a little more than a year before being dismissed in July 2018. The district, through its lawyer, has denied his allegations. Nestor’s complaints were also subject of an Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries investigation, which concluded in November 2019 that there was substantial evidence that Woodson retaliated against Alves because he is Hispanic.
The Central Coast district covers the city of Waldport, east through Tidewater and the forest community of Five Rivers, where it has a substation. Assistant chief Jamie Mason is the department’s acting fire chief.
Later in Thursday night’s meeting Mason received the board’s permission to dispose of several pieces of surplus equipment that had sat unused for so long they had no value or could not be repaired. Mason also said he had worked with staff to re-start a system of personnel evaluations, which had apparently not been done for years.
“I know we have been going through some things, but we have a great team of people here …” he said.
