Chief Bill Wagner – the Director of Public Safety for Northfield Township, responsible for the Township’s Police and Fire Departments – has joined The Washtenaw 100’s Board of Directors.
Chief Wagner is completing the final year of the second three-year term of Chief Robert Vogel of South Lyon, who had served on the W100 Board since 2016 before retiring from the Board earlier this year. Chief Wagner may then apply to remain on the W100 Board for an additional three-year term beginning in 2022.
Per Chief Wagner, “I’ve followed The Washtenaw 100, and I’ve viewed it as very worthy cause, for many years, all the way back to my earliest days with the City of Ypsilanti’s Fire Department in the late ‘80s.”
An Ann Arbor native, Chief Wagner has mostly lived in Northfield Township since age 7. (There were brief stops in Pittsfield Township and Saline). He began his career as a paid on-call firefighter with the Pittsfield Township Fire Department in 1984, then became a full-time firefighter in Ypsilanti four years later. There he advanced from Fire Marshal to Lieutenant to Captain, before retiring from Ypsilanti to begin serving as Northfield Township’s Fire Chief in 2008.
Also, beginning in 1998, Chief Wagner helped organize and develop the Washtenaw County Hazardous Materials Response Team. He then led this team of 50 hazmat professionals, representing 18 Washtenaw County municipalities, from 2001 to 2005.
After Chief Wagner’s promotion to Northfield Township’s Director of Public Safety in 2010, he additionally served for a year and a half as the acting Township Manager.
Chief Wagner had personal experience with The Washtenaw 100 well before joining our Board. “Two of my children received college scholarships from the club,” he says. “Also, last year, Northfield Township’s Police and Fire Departments were fortunate to receive Washtenaw 100 grants for new equipment. This helped us purchase portable battery-operated scene lighting to improve our safety and efficiency at police and fire scenes.”
Chief Wagner now serves as the main firefighting representative on W100’s Board. He plans, in particular, to pursue ideas for increasing our membership. We’re already benefiting from this career public safety professional’s wise counsel.