Lynchburg must fill both of its top two public safety roles, following the sudden retirement of the city’s fire chief just two months after its police chief left to take another job.
City spokesperson Anna Bentson confirmed Wednesday that former fire Chief Greg Wormser has retired after being placed on paid administrative leave on Nov. 14. Former police Chief Ryan Zuidema left his role in September to become police chief in Wilmington, North Carolina.
The search for a new police chief is ongoing and should be concluded in February, Bentson said, while the search for a new fire chief likely won’t begin until March.
When City Manager Wynter Benda placed Wormser on administrative leave last month, he simultaneously initiated an external and independent review of the fire department’s recruitment and retention practices, personnel policies and internal training protocols.
An independent assessment of “both the climate and culture and the recruiting and hiring processes of the Lynchburg Fire Department” will continue, Bentson said in an emailed statement Thursday.
The city has not released details about why Wormser was placed on leave because it is a personnel matter, Bentson said.
According to the city’s employee handbook, administrative leave with pay is offered when the results of official investigations are pending and for other circumstances in which “the employee’s absence from work is in the best interest of the City.” Decisions to extend administrative leave with pay for more than 15 work days are coordinated with the city’s director of human resources and documented in the employee’s official personnel file, according to the handbook.
By the end of the week, city staff will issue a request for proposals for a firm to lead the independent assessment of the fire department, Bentson said. Tasks included in the RFP are conducting a review of recruitment, hiring and personnel practices; engaging with fire department employees, community members and stakeholders; writing a final report with recommendations; and making presentations to the city council and fire department personnel.
“The goal is to create a clear, objective understanding of the department’s current environment, identify areas of strength and concern, support the men and women of the LFD, and prepare to recruit the next Fire Chief,” she said.
City staff plan to contract with a firm by mid-January and conclude the assessment by the end of March, Bentson said. Then, the city will begin a search for the next fire chief.
Meanwhile, Raftelis, a professional search firm, is leading a nationwide recruitment effort to find Zuidema’s replacement.
The firm concluded a community engagement survey Nov. 25 to gather residents’ input on what qualities and experiences they’d like their new police chief to have. The first review of police chief applications will begin Dec. 19, according to Raftelis’ job posting. The new police chief is expected to be announced in February, Bentson said.
The hiring timelines leave Lynchburg with temporary leaders in both of its top two public safety positions this winter: Deputy Fire Chief Jonathan Wright began serving as acting fire chief in mid-November and Deputy Police Chief Ken Edwards was named interim police chief in mid-September.
Long stretches of interim leadership can affect department culture, said Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.
“I encourage that interim situation to be as brief as possible, because the culture of an agency is led by that chief,” Schrad said. “The culture and the morale of an agency depends on consistency … and a morale change can happen overnight.”
In recent years, it’s been more and more difficult to hire police chiefs quickly, Schrad said, as the pool of law enforcement leaders shrinks. There’s been “a slow decrease in the number of people who go into law enforcement and stay in it their entire career,” she said, due to factors such as increasing public scrutiny regarding police reform, the increasing complexity of crimes involving changing technology, and the increasing professionalization of the field, which now expects chiefs to have master’s degrees.
The search process can’t be rushed, Schrad said. Her gold standard is to advertise a role for at least 30 to 45 days to ensure that enough talented candidates find it.
A thorough search matters when the stakes of hiring the right chief are so high, she added. The chief, of a fire or a police department, has two big responsibilities: to communicate to residents about critical public safety matters and to set the cultural standard for the staff in their department.
“It’s probably the most visible local government position — more so than the manager, more so even than the council members, because whenever anything critical happens in the community, the person you hear from is that chief,” she said. “And that chief also has to be the watchdog over his agency and make sure that those officers are getting the proper training, getting the proper leadership.”
While potential chiefs can be evaluated in part by resumes and educational backgrounds, hiring searches are often defined by an “intangible fit,” Schrad said. The right chief must connect with his or her team, city officials, residents and community stakeholders to be the best leader possible, she said.
That “fit” is all the more important as Lynchburg’s two top public safety officials are taking a combined nearly six decades of Hill City experience with them. Zuidema began his career at the Lynchburg Police Department in 1997 and Wormser joined the Lynchburg Fire Department in 1995. Each had served as chief of his respective department since 2018.
“We thank [Wormser] for his more than 30 years of dedicated service to the City of Lynchburg, to all the men and women of the Lynchburg Fire Department, and to our residents, and wish him all the best in his retirement,” Bentson said in the Thursday statement, which mentioned that Wormser led the department to earn international accreditation from the Center for Public Safety Excellence and modernized the department’s emergency medical services.