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Gainesville Fire Chief Meet Richard Williams, who has worked for the city of Gainesville for more than 28 years, and is now our Fire Chief.Meeting Our Community Leaders
AFTER MORE than 28 years on the job for the city of Gainesville, including the last 13 as its fire chief, Richard Williams has seen all the changes. He has served under 11 acting and permanent city managers, including three as chief.
“That’s very unusual,” Williams said. “Since we work for the chief executive of the organization, we usually come and go with them.”
Williams is getting close to retirement from the Gainesville Fire-Rescue Department, but he’s not yet ready to end his career. Williams, who will be 58 later this year, entered the state DROP program a little over four years ago. Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) allows government employees to announce that they will retire within five years, and have their retirement benefits accumulate at a greater rate. Williams will retire from the city next February, but plans on looking for other options.
“I do want to continue to do what I’m doing in some way,” he said. “If there is an opportunity somewhere for a chief, and there are challenges to overcome, I would be interested. But I’m not interested in moving too far away from Gainesville.”
One thing he says he will not consider – at least for now – is political office. Married to Alachua County Commissioner Penny Wheat, Williams says he would not run for office while she is still an elected official. But as far as the future goes, anything is possible, he said.
During his tenure, Williams has seen firefighting change to a very complex profession, and he believes that Gainesville Fire-Rescue has handled those changes very well.
“Technologically, there have been great advances,” he said, “especially in the areas of communication equipment and those who operate it. Also, the scope of firefighting has changed dramatically. Firefighting was always thought of as the job where you put the wet stuff on the red stuff. While we still do that, we now do a lot more. In our department alone, we now have a number of specialty teams – hazardous materials, technical rescue, extrication and emergency medical services. We are also developing urban search and rescue.”
The most complex of these additions, said Williams, is emergency medical services. “Like any other area of the medical community, each action requires a great deal of documentation,” he said. “Even if we arrive at a scene, and someone refuses treatment, it requires paperwork, in much the same way as someone leaving a hospital against medical advice.”
Williams believes his biggest accomplishment has been making sure that the level of service has been maintained and increased despite having a slightly smaller workforce. Although the population and the size of the city has increased dramatically in the last decade, the level of service has not suffered, despite having a 150-person department today, compared to 165 people in the past. With less than a year left on the job, Williams says he still has some work to do, including development of a two-year budget that will essentially be left for his successor. He also is involved in the creation of two urban search and rescue programs – one exclusively for the city and the other to be operated with Alachua County, the city of Ocala and Marion County.
Now, as Williams can see the end of his Gainesville Fire-Rescue career on the horizon, he says the thing he is most pleased about is the mission of fire prevention. “The frequency and severity of fires is definitely down,” he said. “Public education has truly had an impact in our community.”