BYRON, Ga. — Former Byron fire chief Rachel Mosby is now figuring out what comes next after being fired in early June.
The city says the firing was justified with reasons listed in a termination letter. We looked at her personnel file spanning over a decade and got her take on what we found.
Rachel Mosby recalls her 10 years serving as fire chief.
"Of course, you fight like family sometimes but in the end, you're a solid crew and it makes for a great team,” she said.
She says she received positive performance reviews for years.
One from Sept. 2017 says she had ‘very good professional relationships’ and was a ‘credit to the organization.’
By Jan. 2018, she says the tone changed. It’s around the same time she transitioned from a man to a woman.
"It seemed like everything was great like the first three months, and then just gradually went downhill from there,” she said.
Her personnel file shows four reprimands since May 2018. One of them involved more than $600 in clothing purchases she made on a city credit card.
The receipts came from places like Dillard's and Burlington Coat Factory. Mosby says she didn't know it was a violation of city code since she was buying clothes for work.
"In the end I chose not to fight it. I chose to go along to get along and paid the money back,” she said.
That wasn't one of the reasons listed on her termination letter from June 2019.
What it does cite is her failure to get certified as an arson investigator -- attending only five of 21 classes at a Savannah fire chief’s conference, and taking too long to approve business licenses.
A job description from 2014 does list 'fire investigator' as one of the fire chief's requirements. Mosby admits she never got certified, but for good reason.
"I was assured that the arson investigator certification would be removed from the job description, this is going back to 2009, 2010,” she said.
As for the fire chief's conference in Savannah, she says the explanation for appearing to have missed classes is a simple one.
"This is something that's happened before. You get a sign-in sheet or you miss it. You come in five minutes late and miss the sign-in sheet, the thing is I've gotten it corrected in the past,” she said.
The city also placed Facebook posts from the weekend of the chief’s conference in her file showing Mosby checked in at a restaurant and shared a post on the International Transgender Day of Visibility while in Savannah.
None of those posts show her in class. Mosby says she was shocked when she learned those posts were in her file.
"What purpose is there to keep track of an employee participating in a day of visibility for a minority class,” she asked.
As for the business licensing problem, a list shows that Mosby inspected several businesses last year but hadn't filed reports months after the inspections.
"A matter of process that I tried to get the city to understand was that the inspection process and the business license approval process are on two totally different timelines," she said.
In the weeks following her termination, Mosby has found a lawyer and filed a complaint with the EEOC for discrimination.
Reporter Kayla Solomon will have the full story tonight on 13WMAZ News at 11.