The Village of Peoria Heights has hired a new fire chief.
Donovan D. Thompson, 51, succeeds Greg Walters, who is retiring after eight years plus on the job. The Village Board also will be employing Mike Woo, a longtime volunteer firefighter, to cover weekday first-shift duties. The Village Board vote was unanimous, with trustees Diane Mariscal and Sherryl Carter absent.
The chief will work part- time, approximately 20 hours per week, and will earn $40,000 annually. Woo will make $10,000. Both are newly created positions.
“I’m really excited about this new version of the Peoria Heights Fire Department. I know it’s kind of a hybrid model,” said Village Administrator Dustin Sutton, in reference to the deliberations over the last four months as the board and staff mulled multiple options, among them hiring a full-time chief, employing a day crew, creating a fire protection district, continuing the all-volunteer status quo or contracting out to the City of Peoria for fire protection.
Ultimately, this was the compromise reached, and the Heights intends to give it a year – the length of the chief’s employment contract – to see how it all works out.
“Even though we hate to lose Chief Walters ... we are excited about this next step,” said Sutton. “We’ll hit the ground running.”
Both men start immediately.
Thompson’s full-time job is as fire chief at Caterpillar, Inc., where he oversees about 55 employees. He previously worked for 26 years with Chillicothe’s volunteer fire department before ultimately ascending to chief there, as well.
Recruitment, retention and training of volunteers will be his immediate top priorities, said Thompson. The department’s volunteer numbers have dipped the last few years, even as the call volume has not, said Thompson.
Many factors contribute to that, said Thompson, from changing attitudes toward volunteerism to increasing demands by employers, family obligations and even COVID fears – all issues that are not unique to the Heights. That has resulted in an inability to respond to some calls, especially those that are not quite the emergencies that a building fire would be, he said.
The new fire cadet program at Peoria Heights High School is a good start toward reversing that trend, he said, but more is needed, including appealing to community leaders to help stress the importance of citizen involvement as a critical step to keeping an in-house department. Currently, the Heights has about 27 volunteer firefighters.
Meanwhile, Woo, 68, a retired power plant millwright, will be on call weekdays from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sutton called the longtime Heights firefighter “a class act” and “a great ambassador for the Village.”
For Thompson, this is all a continuation of his firefighting lineage. He grew up in Bushnell, where his father served as a volunteer firefighter.
“You’re brought up in that culture,” said Thompson. “It’s in my blood.”
