Complaints Filed Against Cathedral City Fire Chief

Cathedral City Fire Chief Michael Contreras Target of Complaints”

CATHEDRAL CITY — Michael Contreras, who was named Chief of the Cathedral City Fire Department in October 2022, is the target of complaints from within his department, City Manager Charlie McClendon confirmed.

Uken Report reached out to Contreras while he was on vacation to ask what he thought is driving the complaints. “I wish I knew. I have been working really well with the union. We’ve made some great strides over the last 20 months,” Contreras said. “There was a change in leadership in the union and everything started to, I would say, go sideways.”

A couple of weeks ago, Capt. Josiah Maier, who has been with the CCFD for six years, resigned as union president. He and his wife are expecting their first child in December, and he said he wanted to devote time to family. Also, he said, as a new captain, he felt it best to let more senior personnel lead the union leader. Some senior personnel didn’t agree with some of his positions, which could lead to    some heated exchanges. Maier said he thought it best to step down and evolve in his role as captain and be there for the new employees.

Corey Goddard, a captain for the Cathedral City Fire Department and former president of the Cathedral City Professional Firefighters Association (CCPFA), is back in the leadership position. Goddard sent Uken Report a text message requesting that it postpone any publication of this story until the union has with the city and allowed them ample time to conduct any necessary investigations into this matter.

“The one thing that I can assume is that I changed the policy, a vacation-shift-trade policy to create some accountability,” Contreras said. “Before, you didn’t have to get approval. You could just take whatever time off that you wanted. You could just extend it out. We had people that were taking extended periods of time off with no authorization. That is the only policy that’s really been changed, and that seems to be the catalyst. …you can trade a shift and it’s something firefighters are allowed to do, but there still has to be an approval process. And what we had, we had people that were taking 30-plus days off.”

There were times last year when we didn’t have the manpower to fully staff our engine and ambulances, Contreras said.

They can take 10 days off every other month, which I believe is very generous, Contreras said. But we’ve also had other people come and go, ‘Hey, can I have 25 days off because I’m going to Switzerland, I’m taking a family vacation?’ Absolutely, and we’ve approved those. Again, nobody has said to my face, ‘Hey, this is the issue with it.’ I think it is a change. It is accountability and change. Everybody wants change until it affects them.”

Contreras calls it all a “little bump” and points to the good that has happened during his tenure.

“You know what? We’re fully staffed. Our training, we are getting hundreds of hours a month. We’ve got all these new people that are energetic. I look at it as it’s a bump in the road, but I can tell you the day-to-day operations of the fire department, we’re running great. We don’t have vacancies. We’re getting patients to the hospital.”

McClendon said he suspects the complaints are the result of some policy changes — one in particular — the one Contreras mentioned.

“There are complaints about some of the policies — and about the chief,” McClendon told Uken Report. “”It has to do with what you mentioned about structure and standard operating policies and procedures that allow the department to move forward in an efficient and effective manner,” McClendon said. “But I really can’t be more specific about that because that would be integral to what we have to look into based on the complaints.”

McClendon characterized the number of complaints as a “handful.”

“I think I saw items from five or six people,” McClendon said. “I don’t really know because they’re all anonymous. I don’t really know if one person wrote more than one thing or anything like that. It’s difficult for me to say. I really can’t talk much about the details because it’s a personnel matter and we’re looking at that, as we would with any similar situation.”

McClendon said, he would not talk about individual personnel actions, but said there are processes and mechanisms to deal with whatever comes out of an internal examination of the issues.

“We will do that and review everything because we’re committed to making sure that the organization operates in an effective manner. I always remember in things like this that there’s two sides to every story,” McClendon said.

He hastened to add that under the leadership of Contreras, “the department is operating really well. They have grown, they’ve got all their positions filled. We have trained a bunch of new employees that are performing excellently on the job. Our response times remain really good. The resources that the Council’s providing to the department are really strong right now. So, I think there’s a lot of positive things going on, too, and that needs to be part of the discussion.”

Mayor Mark Carnevale said he understands the chief’s position. “Being a boss myself, restaurateur, owner, businessman, I made tough decisions, and all my employees didn’t accept it at first, but then after a while… So, everybody has choices. A fire chief has his choice to run his business the way he does it and the firefighters have a choice whether they accept it or not.”

Carnevale said it’s a “very small part of the department that is upset. The majority is very, very content.”

Contreras “definitely made it very, very clear that he’s not applying anywhere else,” Carnevale said, “That’s just a nasty rumor that somebody started. He said, ‘I’m not that guy. If I was going to do that, Charlie would be the first to know.’ ”

Contreras succeeded Fire Chief John Muhr, who retired Oct. 13, 2022, after 12 years with the Cathedral City Fire Department. Contreras, with more than 30 years of firefighting experience, was a 32-year veteran of the Irvine-based Orange County Fire Authority before coming to Cathedral City.

He was one of six finalists selected to interview for the position through a national search conducted by Bob Murray and Associates.