Goodyear retiring as Sagle Fire's chief

SAGLE — Rob Goodyear is retiring as chief of the Sagle Fire District.

“It’s been a lot of fun; it really has. But it’s time to turn over the reins to the new guy,” said Goodyear.

That new guy is Robert Webber, former chief and fire marshal for the city of Columbia Falls, Mont. Webber a professional firefighter with more than 20 years of experience with the Pinkerton Government Services Inc., in El Segundo, Calif.

Goodyear said Webber quickly rose to the top of a pool of 45 applicants due to his background in incident command, fire prevention, fire inspection, and budget and personnel management.

“He demonstrated he more than met the desirable qualities for the next fire chief,” said Goodyear.

Webber starts work on Monday with Sagle Fire, which has 30 volunteers and nine paid firefighters. Goodyear said he’ll continue to serve the district in a volunteer capacity.

Goodyear took the department’s helm nearly four years ago, shortly after former Chief Barney Phillips began helping to guide the district through economic straits so dire that it nearly ceased to exist.

Mismanagement and poor financial decisions by a previous leadership apparatus lead to a $400,000 crater of debt. Phillips and a newly configured board of fire district commissioners were able to surmount the financial woes and put the district back on stable financial ground by re-negotiating its labor contract and cutting spending.

The district also worked to repair its image in the community and improve its relationships with fellow fire agencies. The district, for instance, recently signed to an automatic-aid agreement with the city of Sandpoint on fire calls.

“My basic objectives were to update our equipment and our interagency relations,” said Goodyear.

The district has also played a key role in preparedness for wildland urban interface fire incidents by helping to organize large-scale training exercises with other agencies in the Panhandle.

One thing Goodyear won’t miss is the mayhem and carnage that routinely crops up on accident-prone stretch of U.S. Highway 95 linking Bonner and Kootenai counties.

“It just seems so senseless,” he said.