Whitefish hires fire chief from Colorado town
The Daily Inter Lake
A Colorado man with nearly three decades of experience in fire, rescue and emergency services will replace Dave Sipe as Whitefish fire chief.
J. Thomas Kennelly of Conifer, Colo., was picked from a slate of 45 candidates following a nationwide search.
Most recently Kennelly was the fire chief of the Elk Creek Fire Protection District in Conifer, 25 miles southwest of Denver.
Much of his previous experience was in Illinois, where he served as the emergency-services coordinator of the Mount Prospect Fire Department in Mount Prospect, Ill., and before that was the first full-time chief of the Wonder Lake Fire Protection District, where he also served as lieutenant, firefighter/paramedic and firefighter/EMT.
Kennelly holds Bachelor of Science degrees in accounting and fire-science management from Southern Illinois University and has been a certified public accountant since 1986. He begins work in Whitefish on Nov. 3.
Sipe recently retired after 30 years with the Whitefish Fire Department, where he had served as chief since 1995. He has been battling non-Hodgkins lymphoma for the past two years.
Kennelly will take on a full plate with the Whitefish department this year. City voters recently approved a levy to provide around-the-clock fire and ambulance service. The new tax revenue will allow the city to hire six additional firefighter/paramedics and expand the department to have three rotating shifts of four emergency-service workers on each shift, with two "floaters" to cover leave time.
Also in the works is a new $7.8 million emergency-services center to be constructed on Baker Avenue. Money from bonding the city's tax-increment finance district will pay for the 32,656-square-foot, two-story complex.
"Chief Kennelly has extensive fire and emergency services, managerial, financial, supervisory and leadership experience. He is the right person to take the Whitefish Fire Department to the next level," Whitefish Interim City Manager Dennis Taylor said in a prepared statement.