Fire chief leaves legacy, prompts speculation

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, May 4, 2001 | 10:59 a.m.

Outgoing Las Vegas Fire Chief Mario Trevino built his 492-employee force into the envy of departments throughout the country, but he also is accused of gambling with public safety to preserve that glowing national reputation.

As Trevino, 48, who has headed the Las Vegas Fire Department for 4 1/2 years, prepares to lead the San Francisco department, he also leaves questions as to whether he ever really settled here.

As early as November 1999, less than three years after Trevino arrived from Seattle, unconfirmed reports from the firefighting industry and from Trevino's personal life pegged him as a candidate for the job as chief of the Washington, D.C., Fire Department.

Trevino said those reports are "simply not true." He does acknowledge, however, that soon after arriving in Las Vegas he found discrepancies between what city staff members had promised for his retirement package and the paperwork he signed.

Trevino was not able to resolve those differences until the Dallas Fire Department, the fifth largest in the country, offered him the fire chief's job in May 2000.

Rather than accept the post, Trevino negotiated improvements to his Las Vegas retirement package as well as a $12,800 raise, bumping his annual salary to $119,000. As part of the amended contract, which was signed in June, Trevino agreed to stay until December 2003. But a clause allowed him to leave before that date, Trevino said, with the caveat that he give the city a 60-day notice, which he has done.

In July 2000, a month after Trevino signed his new contract, the San Francisco Fire Department advertised an opening to lead its 135-year-old, 1,850-member department.

"The opportunity to be chief in San Francisco is not going to come around but once in a lifetime," Russ Sanders, executive secretary of the National Fire Protection Association, based in Louisville, Ky., said. "Certainly, for Mario, this is a more complicated, sophisticated assignment in San Francisco."

Doug Selby, deputy city manager for Las Vegas and Trevino's immediate supervisor, said he was disappointed to see Trevino go.

"But in a way, I'm proud the city (of Las Vegas) is able to offer someone of that caliber to San Francisco," Selby said.

Dave Riggleman, spokesman for Las Vegas, said the city made no counteroffer this time because of the prestige associated with San Francisco. Trevino will earn in the neighborhood of $165,000, a salary with which Las Vegas couldn't compete, Riggleman said.

But Dean Fletcher, president of the Las Vegas firefighters' union, has a less rosy view of Trevino's ascent.

Fletcher says that although Trevino did all he could to support firefighters in the early days, more recently he has sacrificed public safety to maintain his image.

Trevino this spring staffed fire engines with less-skilled personnel on days when the department was short-staffed to cut costs, Fletcher said.

Rather than have all fire engines staffed with paramedics, Trevino approved policies that allowed emergency medical technicians to serve in the northwest areas of Las Vegas, where calls for service are typically infrequent.

"It was sort of a roll of the dice for the safety of citizens when we weren't in that bad of a financial situation to begin with," Fletcher said. "But he was worried his national reputation would be at stake if he came in over budget."

Trevino said he was not putting lives at risk. At the same time he found a way to cut costs over a short period of time without incident to keep from spending money he didn't have, he said.

"Clark County doesn't have any paramedic engines. So if that argument was true, all of Clark County would be playing roulette with people's lives," Trevino said.

And though a few engines on some days did not have paramedics, each station maintained an ambulance staffed with paramedics through the six-week period, Trevino said.

The addition of paramedics for every engine was just one of Trevino's accomplishments in Las Vegas. He also stumped for a $550 million fire safety initiative, which voters passed in 2000.

But Trevino may be best known in the firefighting industry for a lobbying effort in 1999 that convinced the city to pay $8.6 million to buy a 21-vehicle fleet of 2001 edition Pierce trucks. The contract was placed without a bid.

Greg Gammon, a battalion chief who conducted much of the research for the 30-page proposal, said fire departments from across the country have been calling since then to learn how the city was able to avoid settling for a low bid.

"I've projected a positive image for the department which in turn projected a positive image for the city. I've let people know that Las Vegas is a real town with real people," Trevino said. "And now I'm going to a very famous metropolitan city. No one can deny that San Francisco is a beautiful place to live."