WEST FORK [KFSM] – The West Fork Police Commission is set to interview three police chief hopefuls beginning Friday (Oct. 31) and could select a top candidate by next week, Mayor Charlie Rossetti said.
According to the mayor, the three finalists are Scott Rosson, a retired department commander in the Camden, Ark., Police Department, James Bacon, former police chief in Nixa, Mo., and Jim Wilmeth, undersheriff in Lea County, N. M.
The commission is scheduled to interview Rosson on Friday, Wilmeth on Wednesday and Bacon on Nov. 5.
The city’s Police Commission is made up of five West Fork residents, including Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder and Sgt. Craig Stout of the Fayetteville Police Department.
Rossetti said he anticipates having a top candidate in place to be presented to the City Council at its Nov. 13 meeting. The commission might select its top choice by next week, he said.
The police chief will oversee a staff of four police officers in the town of 2,300 residents. The chief’s annual salary probably will be about $50,000, the mayor said.
The search for a new chief began after former Chief John Collins handed in a resignation letter on Aug. 8.
Rossetti has said Collins’ resignation was not connected to a federal investigation into the city’s waste water treatment facility.
“I don’t think that that was ever an issue in his decision, and it certainly wasn’t an issue in my decision accepting that resignation,” Rossetti said in August.
In June, Washington County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Denis Dean told 5NEWS that concerned citizens contacted his office in the spring about sewage leaking from the water treatment facility into the White River, as well as corruption at City Hall.
The prosecutor’s office turned that information over to the FBI.
In addition, an anonymous letter sent to Attorney General Dustin McDaniel by a West Fork citizen details claims that city officials intimidate employees and have covered up problems with the sewage plant.
West Fork Utilities Superintendent Butch Bartholomew said the issue with the 40-year-old plant has been temporarily fixed after it became public in April that waste was being dumped into the White River.
Rossetti said in a statement earlier this summer that the city stopped the runoff into the White River in April when it was brought to their attention.
