By JIM BUTLER
It doesn’t take a firefighter to realize where there’s smoke there’s fire. The hard part sometimes is finding the source and putting it out.
The Pineville City Council at its monthly meeting today is expected to take a step in that direction.
A proposed resolution will authorize the Municipal Fire & Police Civil Service Board to hire a lawyer for advice and counsel in its conflict with acting Fire Chief Kenneth Kessler.
The board ruled in July that Kessler did not meet the high school graduate qualification when applying for work three decades ago and is ineligible to return to his previous post when the acting chief appointment ends.
Mayor Joe Bishop, responding in May to a board notification, said no disciplinary action is planned due to the age of the disputed application and difficulty in determining information regarding it.
The board then moved to a formal evidentiary process, issuing its order in July.
Disputed information includes who wrote on the application that Kessler, who joined the department in 1997, was a 1996 Pineville High graduate, which turns out not to be the case.
It subsequently notes, the board says, he graduated from an unaccredited online school in Florida, two years before it began operating.
The Civil Service board did not explore the who, just the what.
Its July findings and order do not address the pension, compensation and benefits questions raised by the invalidated hiring.
Kessler is the third member of his immediate family to run a fire department.
His older brother Scott was Pineville chief from 2015 through Spring 2023, having joined the force in 1990.
The brothers’ late father George headed the then relatively new Holiday Village Volunteer Fire Department for some time.
Kenneth Kessler has said in published interviews that working with area volunteer departments maybe be something he will pursue.
He also cast doubts on whether the diploma requirement made much difference in his firefighter abilities along the way.
Do high school graduates, for instance, know any more about clove hitch or half hitch knots than non-grads, or between pumpers and tankers?
The eligibility issue developed after a complaint filed in February by recently retired Captain Marcus Washington.
Whether he had just learned of the issue is not known.
Another matter on the Council agenda today relates indirectly to fire service protection.
A petition seeks annexation of four acres at 3419 Hwy 165 with C-1 Commercial zoning. It will be sent to the Zoning Commission.