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The Decherd Board of Mayor and Aldermen came under fire Monday, Sept. 8, stemming from a controversy on social media about a reduced number of firefighters per shift, but Fire Chief Chuck Williams assured an audience of about 25 that the city is amply protected, and insurance rates won’t increase.

The regular monthly meeting at Decherd City Hall became heated with Decherd resident Tara Scott being ejected while another woman followed her out the door saying she was leaving anyway because she would also be cast out for what she had to say to the board.

Scott and others in the audience questioned why the number of firefighters per shift had been reduced when fire protection and safety should be paramount. They said cutbacks should have been made in other areas deemed less essential than fire protection.

The board was accused of wasting taxpayer dollars to a point where fire department personnel had to be cut.

“It’s wrong what you’re doing to the citizens of the city,” Scott said.

 The controversy stemmed from a Facebook post by Fireman Ryan Steele that said:

“Decherd does it again … they cut a position from each shift in July due to budget constraints, leaving the fire department down to three men on shift at a time. This is below the NFPA guidelines of a four-man minimum, making our job a lot more dangerous. Now they have decided to cut us by 14 hours per pay period, which will drastically cut an already below-average firefighter salary but, more importantly, leave only two men on shift a lot of the time. The city has chosen to put our lives and the public’s lives in great danger. The standard for firefighting is that to make entry into a fire, you have to have two men inside and two men outside ready to go in. We were already operating below that. Now we will only have two men available most of the time. The fire department has faced the biggest cuts this past year, which has absolutely killed morale, so relying on people to come back in for calls is virtually nonexistent. They claim this is temporary, but so were the cuts last year that turned into layoffs … I urge everyone to call their elected officials and let them know how they feel about this.”

Steele later posted a legal interpretation of a standard determined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — a U.S. federal agency under the Department of Labor that sets and enforces safety and health standards to protect workers and ensure workplaces are free from recognized hazards — that says at least four firefighters should be present to handle structural fires when entering buildings.

Williams told the audience that the Decherd Fire Department always goes beyond the two-in/two-out standard.

He said that through mutual aid agreements with 15 other nearby fire departments in Franklin County, the two-in/two-out standard is always achieved.

He referred to a major fire in November 2023 at a building in Decherd where at least 35 firefighters were on hand to put it out.

Decherd Police Officer Ruslan Tucker came to Steele’s defense on Facebook, posting negative comments about city management.

Tucker was subsequently fired, and Steele was placed on administrative leave for his actions.

Steele, who was at Monday’s meeting, confirmed that he resigned earlier in the day. He explained that he wasn’t fired but would have been on probation, and the circumstances would have placed him in an awkward working situation.

“I didn’t want be somewhere where I wasn’t wanted and would have had a target on my back,” Steele said, adding that he would feel as though management would always “have an eye on me.”

He said he has a heating and air conditioning business and plans to commit to it full-time.

Decherd Mayor Mary Nell Hess said Decherd’s financial situation was largely out of the board’s control as a result of a sales-tax appropriation mistake.

Decherd found itself in a financial dilemma in 2024 after it had received $795,000 in sales-tax proceeds over an 18-month period that should have gone to the city of Winchester.

The appropriation mistake resulted when proceeds collected from The Home Depot were forwarded to Decherd when the business’ actual physical address is in Winchester, and the revenue should have been appropriated to Decherd’s sister city.

The board approved a 40-cent property tax increase in the 2026 fiscal year budget to offset its financial shortfall and was still faced with cutting personnel, including three firemen and two police officers.

Hess recently said the positions cut were added in recent years, and the reasons the employee base was expanded no longer have the merit they once did.

She had said the fire department has 13 full-time employees and seven part-time workers. She explained that when she was elected as an aldermen several years ago, there were six full-time firefighters.

“It’s ridiculous,” she had said, referring to the deemed need for the additional personnel.

Hess said the staff increase was done so that Fire Station No. 2 could be fully manned. However, that never happened, and the additional personnel who were added were never necessary, she said.

She said the two police positions were added to fill as many vacancies that had loomed on the horizon.

However, the two officers who were expected to leave remained on the force, and the two who were hired were never needed in the first place, she added.