Fire chief rebuts circulated vote of no confidence; residents press council on code enforcement and small-budget accountability

Fire Chief Terrence Morris used the council meeting Dec. 5 to dispute a circulated vote of no confidence and to tell the public he could disprove many of the allegations.

Morris said he had not seen the vote material until just before a previous council meeting and told council members "everything in here is easily disproven." He said the Kenner Fire Department is more fully staffed now than it was six years ago and argued that statements asserting a decline in safety were "disingenuous" and unprofessional. Morris thanked regional colleagues who attended the meeting to show support.

Chris Kaufman, who identified himself as fire chief of Slidell Fire District No. 1, told the council he had worked with Morris in regional chief groups for years and called him "the real deal when it comes to leading in the fire service," citing joint work on salary studies and firefighter cancer screening efforts.

During the public-comment period, Greg Taft (5th District) asked the administration to explain an apparent $1.9 million discrepancy he had found in the fire department budget and requested a review at the next council meeting; staff offered to continue the conversation after the meeting. Ryan Nugent (District 3) urged the city to follow up on warranty replacements and salvage usable fixtures at City Hall to avoid waste. Janice Price (Panama Street resident) said new Spanish-speaking neighbors were leaving beer bottles, throwing diapers from upstairs windows and failing to return trash cans; she said code enforcement had not resolved her calls. City staff and the police chief said they would coordinate with code enforcement to address her concerns.

No formal council action on the vote-of-no-confidence allegations was recorded in the meeting minutes; Morris’s remarks and outside chiefs’ support were part of the public-comment record.