Board of Fire Commissioners

Board Description
At each subsequent general municipal election three or two members of the fire commission shall alternatively be elected for a full four-year term, in order to maintain a board of five members. The members so chosen shall hold their respective offices from the inauguration day in January next following their election for the terms above specified, and until there successors are chosen and qualified. The board shall exercise all the powers and perform all the duties that the laws and ordinances now prescribe, or that may hereafter be prescribed by law and the City Ordinances. [Ch. 73] The said board shall organize annually in the month of January by the choice of one of their members as chairman. They shall also choose a clerk, who may be clerk of the board of engineers, and they shall make such rules and regulations for their own government and for the government of all other officers and members of the fire department, also all buildings and apparatus and horses now used for the transportation of apparatus in case of fire (and the said horses so used are hereby transferred to the fire department) as they may deem expedient. The board of fire commissioners shall also have the sole power to select and purchase land for the purpose of the fire department; and when said board has secured by vote of the board of aldermen an adequate appropriation for the purchase of a specified lot at a specified price, then said board may purchase the same. The said board and the land and buildings committee of the board of aldermen, jointly, shall direct the construction of all buildings erected, altered, remodeled or changed, for the use of the fire department; and no building shall be erected, altered, remodeled or changed, unless the plans thereof have been previously submitted to the board of fire commissioners and approved by it. Upon the completion of any such building or after the selection and purchase of land, the board of fire commissioners shall have full and complete care and control of the same; and whenever such land and buildings shall no longer be used for the purposes of the department, the care and control thereof shall revert to the city. For their services the fire commissioners shall receive such compensation as the city councils may from time to time determine. [A-593]