Police and Fire Commission approves new battalion chief promotion process with peer review

At its March 5 meeting, the Police and Fire Commission unanimously approved a revised battalion chief promotional process that adds an electronic peer-review component modeled on the Green Bay Police Department’s peer review form and expands scenario-based testing to reflect routine chief duties.

The change was presented by an agency official who said, "we're actually mirroring Green Bay Police Department's peer review," and described the new step as an electronic survey of peers and supervisors to provide additional perspectives on candidates’ skills managing scenes and personnel. Mark, who was introduced during the meeting as a participant in the fire department briefing, said the revisions aim to make the assessment "more realistic to what the job entails" by placing candidates in day-to-day scenarios and emphasizing inbox/prioritization tasks that the role requires.

According to the commissioners, the peer review will be conducted electronically and will draw from a randomly selected pool of floor supervisors and other staff to give feedback on candidates’ scene management and leadership. Commissioners said adding that lens complements existing scenario exercises by giving evaluators a different vantage on how candidates manage people and operations.

The commission moved to approve the revised process as presented and the motion carried by unanimous voice vote. Commissioners noted the change will be used in the next promotional cycle and should provide more data to inform selection decisions.

The commission did not provide a written copy of the final, adopted scoring rubric in public session; implementation details and a timeline for the first use of the new process were not specified in the recorded discussion.