WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Prudential Committee on Wednesday learned the names of three finalists to become the next fire chief as selected by the panel's Personnel Committee.

 

Prudential Committee member Joe Beverly, who served on the screening panel, told the full committee that 24 applicants were vetted by the Personnel Committee, an ad hoc group charged with helping the district replace longtime Chief Craig Pedercini, who is scheduled to retire at the end of March.

 

The three finalists, who will be interviewed by the full Prudential Committee on Wednesday, March 5, they are: Jeffrey J. Dias, the deputy chief of the Onset Fire Department near the bridges onto Cape Cod; Ryan Housman, a lieutenant with the Williamstown Fire Department who has served the district for 19 years; and Robert Parsons, the fire chief of the Spencer Fire Department in Worcester County.

 

Parsons oversees a department with nine career firefighters and 30 call firefighters and chairs the local Emergency Planning Committee. He has served Spencer since 2002 as its fire chief after a four-year stint as the fire chief in East Brookfield, where he began as a call firefighter and EMT in 1982.

 

The 1987 Worcester State College graduate has completed chief fire officer management course at the Fire Academy in Stow and an advanced fire investigation course.

 

"He's been a chief for quite a long time now," Beverly said at Wednesday's meeting. "He seemed very knowledgeable and has a lot of good qualities that hopefully would make him a good chief here in Williamstown as well."

 

Housman is well known to the Prudential Committee and served on its Building Committee that shepherded the construction of a new fire station on Main Street.

 

He started with the WFD in 2005 and has served as a lieutenant since 2022, supporting the chief and assistant chief in a variety of capacities. He has led mutual aid crews in neighboring towns and coordinated weekly department training. He earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Northeastern, and his full-time job is as project manager and structural engineer for Pittsfield's J.H. Maxymillian, where he coordinates construction of projects up to $22 million in value.

 

"Obviously, he's a Williamstown resident," Beverly said. "He has a lot of strong qualities that would make him a viable chief here in Williamstown as well."

 

Dias, like Housman, "has never worked as a full-time chief, but he's another [candidate with tremendous credentials and education," Beverly said. "He's very passionate about the fire service."

 

Dias started as a call firefighter in 1998, becoming a full-time firefighter in 2005, a captain in 2014 and chief in 2021. During that time, he has served as an instructor at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy from 2019 to the present.

 

Since 2011, Dias has written and managed more than $875,000 in state and federal grants, according to his letter applying for the position.

 

"They're all qualified to do the job," Personnel Committee member Fred Puddester told the Prudential Committee. "Lots of training, lots of certifications. You have three people you can choose from."

 

Prudential Committee Chair David Moresi commented on the high number of applicants for the post.

 

"I think it says something about the Williamstown Fire Department and about the community of Williamstown," he said. "As the candidates did their due diligence, I'm sure they got excited about this community."

 

The committee has scheduled 75-minute blocks for each candidate's interview on March 5 starting at 1 p.m. at Town Hall.

 

All five members of the Prudential Committee will participate in the hiring process. After Wednesday's meeting, Alexander Steele said he had resigned his position as a call-volunteer firefighter with the district in order to avoid the conflict of interest issue that could arise from having a paid employee involved in the hiring process for the chief.

 

Moresi encouraged any members of the public who can attend the interviews next Wednesday to do so, and the committee discussed asking the town's community access television station, WilliNet, to film the session so it can be seen by as many residents as possible.

 

Moresi said the Prudential Committee on March 5 will set a date for a meeting to decide from among the three finalists.

 

The new chief will join a department that looks different than it does today both because of the new station that is scheduled to open late this year and because of a change to its management that the committee began discussing on Wednesday.

 

Moresi suggested, and his colleagues agreed on a 5-0 vote, to begin forming a Finance Committee to advise the Prudential Committee on budgetary matters.

 

"There are going to be some capital expenses coming," Moresi said. "We also are in the midst of a building project that, when it's done, there will be unknowns that come with that.

 

"We are fortunate here in Williamstown that we have individuals willing to volunteer their time. More importantly, we have some very smart individuals here in Williamstown who come from impressive backgrounds. … It's the ideal time to form a Finance Committee to ensure we're working in the most efficient manner with the goal, just like with town government, that we keep those taxes low."

 

Moresi noted that officials both at the town and school district level have talked about significant headwinds impacting budget decisions both for fiscal year 2026 and long term.

 

John Notsley was among the members expressing support for Moresi's proposal.

 

"The next two or three years, the expenditures are going to be there," Notsley said. "We've got to live with them. We've got to deal with them. We've been so frugal all these years. Now, we're paying for it. We're going to need some expertise."

 

As for the new fire station, the Prudential Committee's construction consultant reported Wednesday that the Main Street project is back on schedule after a slight slippage in the steel erection phase.

 

"Steel is pretty much complete," Bruce Decoteau told the committee. "It will be by the end of the week as long as we don't get much rain. You can't weld in the rain."

 

Decoteau said the framers and masons will be on site as soon as next week to begin work on the building envelope and that the wooden trusses for the peaked roof are in a warehouse waiting to be delivered to the site.

 

In other business on Wednesday, the Prudential Committee heard that the district had received a clean audit for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2024, and that the district's firefighters, along with crews from North Adams, Clarksburg and Pownal, Vt., saved a house on Bulkley Street from a structure fire on Saturday morning.

 

"Between the three departments, everything went quite well," Pedercini said. "We managed to keep the fire at bay. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't get into the attic and expand from there. Between the Williamstown crew getting there first and the North Adams guys second, there was good collaboration.

 

"We saved the house. It's still standing. Yes, it's going to need a lot of renovation work done to it. But as you go through the rooms, the homeowners were happy to see a lot of their possessions were still intact."