Editor’s note: Our countdown of the Top 10 Stories of 2019 continues, as selected by the newsroom staff of The Vindicator.

YOUNGSTOWN — The conflict between the firefighters union and the Mayor Jamael Tito Brown administration — particularly fire Chief Barry Finley — is at new heights over numerous issues, including staffing, equipment and the closing of a fire station.

One concern expressed by firefighters is a possibility of violence by their chief.

Those concerns and other resulted in a Dec. 4 no-confidence vote of 90-17 by the union against Finley.

The matter escalated to the point that the State Employment Relations Board stepped in last week to file a civil lawsuit against the city, seeking to stop it from reducing the number of battalion fire chiefs.

There have been concerns expressed for several months — greatly increasing since mid-October — by the union about Finley’s leadership.

The union has complained about “the genuine possibility of violence” by Finley — pointing to comments he’s made and a 2012 disciplinary action against him in which he was placed on a 45-day unpaid suspension for “physically assaultive conduct against a subordinate co-worker” and “subject to termination for any (further) aggressive conduct” over the next years.

The union gave the chief a no-confidence vote Dec. 4 accusing him of poor communication, budget mismanagement, training and safety issues, and a lack of leadership.

Brown has defended Finley, saying the chief is doing an excellent job and has his support.

Also, Law Director Jeff Limbian wrote a Dec. 13 letter to the union that “the information offered to the members of the union was grossly inaccurate” and “the administration maintains complete confidence in Chief Barry Finley.”

The union has taken issue with the city’s decision to reduce battalion chiefs from six to three through attrition, ongoing problems with the department’s radio system and the closing of the North Side fire station — saying all are safety issues for firefighters and citizens.

The two sides settled the radio issue Dec. 5 when the city agreed to upgrade the equipment at a cost of about $285,000 sometime later in 2020.

But the administration was dealt a blow when SERB filed a court action last Wednesday — something Limbian acknowledged was “very unusual” — seeking a temporary restraining order against the city to stop it from eliminating three battalion chief positions and an injunction returning the union and city “to the status quo as it existed prior to the alleged illegal acts of the city of Youngstown in eliminating” the positions.

The reduction, according to SERB’s lawsuit, is the city “retaliating against the union for filing a grievance on the issue of the city’s refusal to provide safe radio equipment.”

SERB is the state agency that administers and enforces Ohio’s public employees collective bargaining laws.

dskolnick@tribtoday.com