Yachats Fire board dismisses Petrick as administrator, chief effective Feb. 28 seeking “new direction in leadership”

By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle

YACHATS – The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board fired chief Frankie Petrick without cause during its regular monthly meeting Monday.

The board voted unanimously to relieve Petrick, 79, of her duties as volunteer chief and paid administrator effective Feb. 28. She had been involved with the district for 51 years, as its volunteer fire chief since 2004 and its paid administrator since 2005.

Paramedic Jeff Mathia agreed to fill the role of interim chief and administrator beginning March 1. Mathia was recently named to oversee ambulance services and Petrick designated him as assistant fire chief in a letter to the board prior to Monday’s meeting.

The board, comprised of chair Doug Myers, Katherine Guenther, Drew Tracy and Stan Wagaman, voted to remove Petrick at the onset of the meeting, which followed a closed, executive session to consider information or records that are exempt by law from public inspection.

There was no discussion about the decision among board members following the vote. The board was down a member after the resignation last month of longtime treasurer Ed Hallahan, a strong supporter of Petrick’s. Petrick had no response during the meeting.

Myers, who attended the meeting remotely, read a prepared statement about Petrick’s removal when asked by the Lincoln Chronicle following the meeting.

“The board wishes to thank the chief for her 30-plus years of service to the district,” Myers said. “We appreciate her efforts and all sorts of positive initiatives. The board has determined at this time to move in a new direction in leadership to best serve the evolving needs of our district. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition for district staff, volunteers and our constituents.”

He said Mathia would serve as acting chief while the district begins the process of finding a permanent replacement.

The “without cause” removal, typically operates under the state’s at-will employment doctrine, allowing employers to terminate someone at any time, for any lawful reason or no reason at all, without notice.

“Because this is a confidential personnel matter, the district will provide no additional comments at this time,” the board’s statement concluded.

Myers did elaborate to say the idea of moving in a new direction had been discussed for more than a year and brought up during several board meetings attended by Petrick “So this shouldn’t have been a surprise.”

The board’s discussions and efforts have been aimed at having a paid fire chief with all the credentials to fight fires and take command at scenes – something Petrick does not have – who will also serve as the district administrator. It is the common model for most fire agencies in Oregon.

Documents show the board hired a private investigator in 2025 to work with the district’s attorney to prepare a report for the board – and thus shielding its results from public inspection. While it was common knowledge among district staff that the questions revolved around Petrick, the nature of those questions and the findings have not been made public but only discussed in closed, executive sessions.

“The board was responding to input they’d received from inside and outside the station,” Myers said. “And (then) after taking a look at that decided as by what I just read to remove her without cause.”

End of an era

Petrick, who will turn 80 in April, said she will have served the district for 51 years when her departure comes at the end of the month.

She told the Chronicle she was not surprised by the decision to remove her.

“Because that’s what they’ve been working on during their executive sessions,” Petrick said. “And when Doug came on board with the district, he indicated that he wanted to see radical change, with not necessarily a lot of detail.”

She also noted that Myers came on board with a history of working for larger fire agencies in communities with large pools of able-bodied volunteers. Myers served 46 years as a paid firefighter, captain and battalion chief with organizations as large as the Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue to volunteer captain with the Sisters-Camp Sherman Fire District. He joined the board in February 2024.

Petrick said she was aware the board had hired a private investigator because “they evidently received some complaints from co-workers and one of them was about what they thought should be happening.” There were also some questions about some credit card charges, she added, but said the card had been “hacked” and dealt with resulting in no loss to the district.

“I think that there were perhaps some younger employees who might have been thinking that I was getting too old,” she said. “However, there are a lot of fire chiefs that don’t go into burning buildings anymore.

“Now there’s a big push that everybody’s got a lot of rank on their collar,” she said. “I never cared about that. And I’m thinking they wanted to work on a more updated format. I’m really not sure why there was such a push. But there was.”

Petrick stopped short of saying she was okay with her removal.

“I don’t know if I’m okay with it,” she said. “I didn’t much like them kind of pressuring me. I’m not sure I’m ready to go. However, I want the district to be able to run well and hope that as they go forward, they remember all of the years of hard work that people have put in to make Yachats Fire – Yachats Fire.”

Petrick will not receive a severance package and says she has no retirement plan, but will receive money set aside by the district in a length of service fund for volunteers.

She has no concerns about the health of the district because “we’ve got a good bunch of people.” But Petrick is concerned the district may not absorb the non-profit South Lincoln Ambulance when its contract expires at the end of March.

Petrick, who serves on the three-person SLA board, has made clear the service cannot function financially without fire district personnel.

She said she has heard from Central Coast Fire & Rescue board members who are pushing for consolidation with Yachats Fire that an independent ambulance service is not needed and that Pacific West Ambulance can fill that role. But she disagrees.

“I’ve wanted the board to ask the district patrons, because while years ago we had fires, lots of fires; today the bulk of our calls are medical related,” Petrick said. “And while we have paramedics here, I think if we were not transporting and doing full patient care, we would be hard pressed to be able to maintain that.”

The Yachats Fire board paid hired consultants last year to determine the merits of bringing the ambulance service under its wing and plans to make a decision before the contract expires.

Transition period

The board did not ask Petrick to stay on as an adviser after February, but she said she would be happy to do so because she does not want to see the district stumble or lose efficiency.

She also feels the district will be in good hands with Mathia, who she chose as assistant chief just days before the board meeting, because of his business background and experience.

“I’ve known him for many years and he’s a good businessman,” Petrick said. “And he worked for (Pacific West Ambulance) for many years. He was new to fire, for many years just interacting because of car accidents and medical incidents. However, knowing that he had a great work ethic and the knowledge to make the business end work as opposed to somebody who might have fire experience as a firefighter, but not necessarily as an admin.”

Before being named assistant chief, Mathia’s title in Yachats was emergency medical services chief, a position he also holds as a volunteer with the Seal Rock Fire District. He oversees and trains paramedics, emergency medical technicians and anyone with EMS licenses.

“It is short term here in Lincoln County but I came from an agency where I was EMS chief in Vernonia where I volunteered for nearly 10 years,” Mathia said. “I ran scenes there and worked hand-in-hand with the chief.”

Mathia said that along with a lot of life experience, his entire working career has been managing businesses in one form or another, from restaurants to retail.

“The life experience is crucial nowadays,” he said. “And helping manage people and adapting to the different generations of people that we see coming through now.”

Mathia has also been instrumental in helping to form an intergovernmental agreement with Seal Rock fire to share its volunteers with Yachats, which it has done in the past month without an agreement. Seal Rock currently has 50 volunteers that serve Seal Rock and East Lincoln County Fire and Rescue. Yachats has two volunteers – something Mathia is working to change.

Mathia said he had no heads up that the board would ask him to serve as interim chief but that he saw things indicating there could be a potential change.

“So I just did what I normally do and try to be the best employee that I can while doing my job,” he said.

In other business

• Two Yachats Fire board representatives involved in consolidation talks with two Central Coast board members made clear during their meeting last week that Yachats is “calling a time out” on those talks and any subsequent decisions until its board has time to deal with its current issues.
• Paula D’Alfonso of Yachats was chosen to fill the board position vacated by Hallahan. She has regularly attended board meetings over the past two years and was a member of the board’s budget committee for two budget cycles. She brings a professional background of working 30 years in government procurement positions.

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]