fire chief; firefighter; chairperson
Personal Information
Born in 1955 in LA; son of Norman and Ora Bell
Education: University of Toledo, BA, 1978.
Religion: Baptist.
Career
Toledo Fire Department, officer, 1980-90, chief, 1990-; Joint Regional Terrorism Task Force, Lucas County, Ohio, chairman, 2001-.
Life's Work
In 1990, when he was named chief of the Toledo Fire Department, Michael Bell earned two distinctions: At the age of thirty-five, he became the youngest fire chief among the nation's metropolitan fire departments. As an African American, he also became the first such person to helm a major fire department in the state of Ohio. Unfazed by the attention on his pioneering role, Bell worked effectively to deal with budgetary, management, and public relations challenges during his first decade as the chief of Toledo's fire department and survived three changes in the city's political administration while helping to make Toledo a safer place. Indeed in 2001 the city recorded no fire deaths, the first time in a century that the feat had been accomplished. Stressing diversity, Bell also worked to maintain the presence of minorities on the department's force and increased minority representation in the Toledo fire department above the city's minority population as a whole.
Michael Bell was born in Louisiana in 1955 to Norman and Ora Bell. He was one of four sons in the Bell family, who relocated to Toledo, Ohio, around 1960. Bell attended public schools in Toledo and graduated from the north side's Woodward High School, where he would later be inducted into an alumni hall of fame. Entering the University of Toledo, Bell played for the school's football team and earned his bachelor's degree in education in 1978. On March 21, 1980, Bell joined the Toledo Fire Department, where he held a variety of positions over the next decade. The six-foot, 240-pound rookie first worked as a water rescue diver and paramedic before moving into the department's managerial ranks as a paramedic shift supervisor, training officer, and recruiter. At the time that he was promoted to chief of the Toledo fire department by then-City Manager Thomas Hoover, Bell had risen to the position of captain in the department's Training Bureau.
Promoted Safety and Diversity as Chief
When Bell took the reins of the Toledo Fire Department on August 21, 1990, the thirty-five-year-old became the youngest leader of any metropolitan fire department in the United States. He also made history by becoming the first African American to helm a fire department in one of Ohio's cities. Both feats presented particular challenges to the new chief. Because he had risen through the ranks so rapidly--going from rookie to chief in just ten years on the force--some observers were skeptical that Bell had enough experience to handle his new job. Others wondered if the rank-and-file would accept Bell's leadership, as he was part of the first wave of firefighters hired after the department was placed under a consent decree to increase its minority staffing levels. Although seventeen percent of the Toledo Fire Department's firefighters were African American at the time Bell took over as chief in 1990, the consent decree remained in place to ensure that that level did not drop off.
Like many urban centers, Toledo faced a number of challenges in the 1980s that had a direct impact on its public services around 1990. A declining population and industrial base meant that its tax base was shrinking, which translated into budgetary problems for new equipment and effective staffing levels. The city also had a growing stock of abandoned houses, business, and factories that not only added to the dilapidated appearance of some of its older neighborhoods but presented serious arson risks as well. The structure of the city's government also complicated the management of the Toledo Fire Department. Although Bell, as chief, was on the front lines in negotiating with the Toledo Firefighters Union, Local 92, he was also accountable to the city manager, who had hired him. In the background of this confusing arrangement were the city's mayor and city council, who as elected officials had no direct authority over Bell besides the power of their offices to sway public opinion on public-safety issues.
Bell dealt with the issue of budgetary constraints by keeping staffing levels at the fire department around 560 members and adding to the training they received to ensure better and more efficient service to the public. After negotiating with the union, Bell succeeded in increasing the number of trained paramedics on the force and worked to have at least one paramedic assigned to each fire station. With eighty percent of the force's 50,000 fire runs each year pertaining to medical emergencies, the improved training helped to save lives while making the department more efficient in its response and recovery times.
In order to address the potential for deadly fires in the city's older neighborhoods, Bell continued efforts to educate the public about fire prevention and to maintain a high level of inspections by fire department officials. The department also benefited from an aggressive demolition program instituted by the city in 1994, which began to eliminate the stock of abandoned buildings that were potential arson targets. As he reflected in a 2002 interview with Fire Chief magazine, "The city's goal is to demolish three hundred vacant buildings per year, and we've been doing it for eight years now. This lessens the potential for vagrants to be in the buildings and trapped by fire."
Fire Chief Tenure Marked by Success
Another significant challenge to Bell was surviving the city's sometimes sharp political currents. After voters approved a "strong mayor" form of government, Bell came directly under the authority of newly-elected Mayor Carty Finkbeiner in 1993. Finkbeiner, whose "bottom-line" management style resulted in the departure of almost every department head during his eight years as mayor, ended up being one of Bell's biggest supporters, despite his initial reservation about retaining the young chief. "I would not trade Michael Bell for any fire chief in the United States of America," Mayor Finkbeiner told the Toledo Blade in August of 2000, "We are very, very fortunate. I can unashamedly say I love the man."
Bell also earned positive coverage for his extensive volunteer efforts outside of the fire department. A member of the board of directors of St. Vincent's Hospital, Bell also worked with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Toledo, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America, the Red Cross, and the Easter Seals Society, among other nonprofit organizations. A member of the True Vine Missionary Baptist Church, Bell enjoyed worshipping at other churches on the weekends. Bell also made frequent appearances in newspaper society columns at various civic and private functions.
After ten years as the chief of the Toledo fire department, Bell looked back with satisfaction over the progress he had made in his position. As he reflected in an interview with the Toledo Blade in August of 2000, "My perception of the job when I first took it, I may have underestimated. I didn't realize how much of a disadvantage I was coming in at, based on the elements of my time on the job, rank on the job, color of my skin, and my being single. But I can honestly say today that I have no regrets about coming in that way and all the hurdles put in front of me. They've actually made me a better person and a better fire chief."
More important than his tenth anniversary on the job was the accomplishment that the Toledo Fire Department reached the following year, when the city recorded no deaths from fire-related accidents for the first time in at least a century. In part the accomplishment resulted from the department's fire detector giveaway program, which distributed 600 of the devices to low-income Toledo residents in 2001 alone. Bell also took pride in the fact that no fire fighters had died in the line of duty during his tenure in office.
Faced New Challenges
In the wake of the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, Bell, like other public-safety officials, faced new challenges in protecting the public from lethal attacks. The month after the attacks, Mayor Finkbeiner appointed Bell as the head of the newly created Joint Regional Terrorism Task Force, the agency responsible for formulating and implementing emergency-response programs in case of such an attack. Bell's management experience and the respect he had earned from his colleagues helped him get the new board off to a solid start, although he admitted that the lack of federal funding was worrisome. "If we train people off-shift, that's overtime. Those costs are not anticipated in anyone's budget," he told the Toledo Blade in March of 2002, adding, "I'm not saying we're unprepared. I'm saying we can do it better."
Bell encountered another challenge in late 2002 when a group of Toledo fire fighters, the Glass City Black Brothers United, raised allegations that the department was not meeting its affirmative-action goals in its hiring practices. Although the racial composition of the fire department's personnel exceeded the minority percentage of the population in Toledo, the group claimed that the department had hired only 26 African-American fire fighters since 1992. In response Bell explained that most of the African Americans who took the recruitment test did not receive a passing score and that of the ten recruits to the fire class of 2002, nine failed to pass background checks and one failed the department's fitness test. He also noted that the minority composition of the latest class of recruits was forty percent, although it did not contain any African Americans. Bell agreed, however, that more mentoring and outreach efforts would help maintain a significant minority presence on the department's staff.
The willingness to continue the dialogue over the affirmative-action issue typified the collegial and inclusive reputation that Bell had earned during his time as chief. As he commented in an interview with Fire Chief magazine in 2002, "I guess what I learned is that even as a fire chief, all I need to be able to do is find out which resource to use at what time and we'll always be successful. There are a lot of people who know a lot of things in this organization, but sometimes--and I've seen this in other organizations--they're never asked for their opinion, so you end up making a mistake because you end up trying to do it all yourself."
Awards
President's Recognition Award, International Association of Fire Chiefs, 2000; inductee, Woodward High School Hall of Fame.
Further Reading
Books
- Porter, Tana Mosier, Toledo Profile: A Sesquicentennial History, Toledo Sesquicentennial Commission, 1987.
- Fire Chief, April 1, 2002.
- Toledo Blade, May 27, 1997, p. 14; August 20, 2000, p. A13; October 12, 2001, p. A7; March 9, 2002, p. B1; June 20, 2002, p. B2; September 11, 2002, p. A1; December 28, 2002, p. B1.
- "Chief's Office," City of Toledo, www.ci.toledo.oh.us/index.cfm?Dept=Dept6Nav&Page=Page231 (April 4, 2003).
- "History of Toledo Fire Department," City of Toledo, www.ci.toledo.oh.us/index.cfm?Dept=Dept6Nav&Page=Page235 (April 4, 2003).
— Timothy Borden
