Alexandria Interim Fire Chief Jim Schwartz has put a departmental redeployment on hold that would have replaced fire engines with ambulances.
Former Alexandria Fire Department Chief Corey Smedley announced his AFD Forward plan in September. The plan would have replaced fire engines at Station 204 (900 Second Street) in Old Town North and Station 205 (1210 Cameron Street) in Rosemont. Using 2022 data, AFD found that 72% of their calls for service (out of more than 27,000 incidents) were medical and rescue-related, while just 15% were fire alarm and fire-related.
The move was met by condemnation from the local fire department union. Two months later, in November, Smedley suddenly announced his retirement and said he’d done all he could for Alexandria.
Soon after, Jim Schwartz, a Del Ray resident and former deputy county manager for public safety and technology in Arlington got a call from City Manager Jim Parajon. Schwartz is semi-retired now after a 40+ year career in the fire service. He teaches graduate courses at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, just bought a house with his wife in North Carolina and didn’t have returning to the fire service on his mind.
“I told him right away that I would not be a candidate for the permanent job,” Schwartz said of his conversation with Parajon.
Schwartz accepted the interim job, started work in January and is now helping the city look for a replacement chief. The city wants to fill the position as soon as possible, according to Ebony Fleming, the city’s communications director.
“The new chief has to have some technical competence,” Schwartz said. “They need to be able to deal with budget issues, capital issues, things like the fleet and firehouses. But I think that the the most prominent feature that we’re looking for is somebody who has an ability to lead and the ability to connect with the members of the organization to help them thrive in their service to the community.”
Schwartz also put Smedley’s AFD Forward plan on hold. He said that department staff are now sifting through seven years of calls for service to determine if the reduction in fire engines would have in impact on neighboring jurisdictions.
“We haven’t implemented anything on AFD Forward,” he said. “If we switched out engines for ambulances, would that cause Arlington and Fairfax to run more engine calls into Alexandria? We didn’t have an answer for that. So we’re doing an analysis of that right now.”
Schwartz oversaw Arlington’s fire department for 12 years and says that the department’s plans should not have a negative impact on neighboring jurisdictions like Fairfax and Arlington Counties. After all, he said, the regional “NOVA agreement” between local fire services is now approaching its 50th year.
“It’s a way of doing business that has been around for a long time,” he said. “I think our participation in that, from which we benefit greatly, also causes an obligation on us to make sure that when we’re making some resource decisions that they serve the citizens of Alexandria very well, but they also are done in concert with our partnership with in this case Arlington and Fairfax.”
Schwartz said that he will present Parajon with a staff report with his recommendation on AFD Forward.
He also said that if the permanent position is filled, that the first thing he wants to do is leave with his wife for his new house in North Carolina.
“We have vacation plans later on in the fall, but if the replacement comes during the summer I will go spend the summer at my house in North Carolina,” he said.
