BANGOR, Maine — The City Council unanimously confirmed and authorized a two-year employment contract for the promotion of a former assistant fire chief to the department’s top position.
Assistant Fire Chief Tom Higgins will begin work Tuesday as the new chief for the Bangor Fire Department, with an annual salary of $84,640. As fire chief, he also will serve as the city’s emergency management director.
Higgins’ confirmation Monday night comes after City Manager Cathy Conlow announced earlier this month she was appointing Higgins to the post.
Higgins has been attending council meetings on behalf of the department.
While addressing the council and attendees, including dozens of firefighters, Higgins said becoming fire chief was a lifelong dream for him.
“I promise I will try my best every day to do my best for the city,” he said after taking his oath of office.
Higgins has served 24 years with the department, holding a variety of posts and serving most recently as one of the department’s four assistant fire chiefs.
“From all of us here in Bangor, it’s always great when we can promote from within,” Councilor David Nealley said.
Higgins also served six years as chief of the Hermon Fire Department before coming to Bangor.
Conlow said Higgins’ prior service with the Bangor Fire Department was not a factor in his promotion.
“He’s the best candidate for the city,” she said.
According to Assistant City Manager Robert Farrar, Higgins was one of 26 candidates to apply for the job, including five internal candidates.
Farrar said city officials interviewed all five internal candidates in an initial round of interviewing. They interviewed one internal and one external candidate in a subsequent round, he said.
Conlow said the interviews were conducted by a panel of city officials and outside advisers, including Brewer Public Safety Director Perry Antone and Bangor resident Mark Woodward.
Other panel members included Conlow, Farrar and Bangor police Chief Mark Hathaway.
Higgins replaces former Fire Chief Scott Lucas, who resigned in December after announcing three months earlier he would not seek a continuation of his two-year contract.
After his announcement, city officials placed Lucas on paid, non-disciplinary administrative leave in early September. He remained on leave until his formal resignation.
Neither party disclosed the reason for his leave.
In other matters Monday, the council approved changes to the city code intended to clarify the city’s ordinance regarding window signs advertising businesses.
The amendments come after local attorney Stephen Smith began advertising his practice with a cutout of his likeness placed in a second-story window on Central Street downtown.
The cutout since has been replaced by an advertisement for the law firm of Lipman & Katz, which Smith joined last summer.
While city code bars signs that exceed 20 percent of a window’s area “on the ground floor street frontage of the premises,” they make no such provision for second-story windows.
The amended code states: “No more than 20 percent of any window may be covered by window signs.”
Councilor Gibran Graham said the change makes it clear window signs are allowed on all floors, as long as they don’t exceed 20 percent of the window space.
Assistant City Solicitor Paul Nicklas said, unless instructed otherwise by the council, the city generally does not pursue violators of ordinances retroactively, so the Lipman & Katz sign likely will be allowed to remain.
Other amendments approved Monday allow downtown bars and restaurants with outdoor seating to use umbrellas that feature promotional signs or logos.
Graham said downtown business owners requested relief from a provision requiring umbrellas be logo-free because they can get free umbrellas featuring the logos of their suppliers.
Those umbrellas must be replaced annually, he said.
The amended code requires that umbrellas be used only to provide shade or protection from rain in outdoor seating areas.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.