I have never met recently “retired” Marion Fire Chief Rick Guerzoni. I have never met Polly Church, who had recently been the only full-time member of the department besides Guerzoni. I have absolutely no horse in the race.
    I don’t know Fire Captain Steven Robbins, either. I do know he just recently completed the shortest tenure as interim fire chief in the history of mankind. I do know when something doesn’t smell quite right.
    The official word is that Guerzoni has “retired.” The official word is that Church was transferred to Town Hall and had her hours cut because of “budgetary concerns.”
    I’m not buying it for a second.
    During an interview with Andrea Smith, the 55-year-old Guerzoni sat on the bumper on his favorite truck with tears in his eyes, talking about how hard it’s going to be hearing that fire siren in the night and knowing he can’t rush to the station to join his other “family.”
    That doesn’t sound like a man who’s leaving on his own accord. Guerzoni won’t discuss the details of his decision to sign a letter drafted for him. He doesn’t have to. I’ve been in the business long enough to know how these things work. If he promises to keep his mouth shut, the town will send him off with as much retirement money as possible while patting him on the head for a job well done.
    I also know how attrition works. If a town wants an employee to quit, transferring that person away from friends and slashing his or her hours can sometimes do the trick. Of course it’s cowardly. That’s the tactic of somebody who doesn’t have the spine to look somebody in the face before altering their life.
    Nobody will come out and say what this is really about. I’d be more than happy to. This is about trying to plug a perceived leak in the flow of information coming from Town Hall.
    Guerzoni and Church are being unfairly blamed for our reporting of the EMS controversy in Marion last year. We’ve heard through the grapevine that some people in Town Hall believe Guerzoni and Church were the primary sources for that story.
     That is absolutely incorrect.
    Did we speak to the fire chief about his desire to merge EMS with the fire department in order to increase response time? Absolutely. It would have been irresponsible for us not it. Did we speak with Church, the only other full-time employee of the fire department? Of course we did. That’s part of being thorough.
    But we also spoke to numerous other people as well, including those within EMS and at Town Hall. We spoke to every single person we thought might offer some responsible insight.
    I won’t pretend to know the entire history of animosity between the fire department and other people in town government. An entire study was commissioned (and apparently ignored) on that topic. But anyone who saw Guerzoni publicly raked over the coals by selectmen over firefighters holding a raffle and smoking too close to the station knows this animosity remains alive and well.
    The ironic thing is the entire EMS controversy had pretty much blown over after the town started charging for ambulance service and the sky didn’t fall as predicted.
    Politics have absolutely no place in something as vital as the fire department. Personally, I don’t care what beef some town officials have with Guerzoni and Church. There was never any public indication that they performed their duties with anything but the utmost professionalism and ability.
    The fact that the person appointed as interim fire chief backed out almost as soon as he was offered the job should speak volumes about this. Firefighters are a family. They have to be. And when a member of the family is unfairly attacked, they always stick together.
    That is something the hollow hearts in Town Hall will never truly understand. They can move people around like pieces on a chessboard, but they’ll never learn how to make the winning move.