The top two men in Jim Thorpe Borough's newly created municipal fire company are in place, but not without a bit of disagreement at Thursday night's council meeting.

By a 4-1 vote, with two members absent, council tabbed Bill Diehm as fire chief and Vince Yaich as deputy fire chief.Both men keep the same titles they have now, which didn't sit well with Councilman John McGuire, the lone dissenter."I have great respect for Bill, but there are a ton of issues with the fire department right now and the buck stops at the top," McGuire said. "The person at the top has to change. Bill would be suited for assistant chief, but he shouldn't be the top man."McGuire said he would have pushed for Yaich to be chief, however Yaich said Thursday he wasn't currently interested in being the head man.Thorpe officially created a municipal fire department last month, citing the need to have a greater oversight of finances and personnel decisions.Under the new ordinance, council will vote on a chief and deputy chief every January."I just think we need to get this thing off the ground," Councilman Jay Miller said. "Vince doesn't want to be chief. I don't think we're prepared to do anything else at this point but what we have done to get it moving along."Miller said Diehm would be made aware the expectations of him."If he can't do it, we'll be talking about this again in January," Miller said.Voting against Diehm as chief was nothing personal, McGuire explained."We have leadership issues," he added. "Vince would take care of discipline issues. Bill can't."In addition to the chief and deputy chief, council will also appoint line officers under the new ordinance.After a lengthy executive session near the tail end of Thursday night's meeting, council also passed a motion to send a letter to the East Mauch Chunk Firemen's Relief Association, which is affiliated with the Fairview Hose Company on the east side of Jim Thorpe."The letter will inform the association that council has reason to believe it may be out of compliance with state guidelines and may result in the reallocation of firemen's relief money," council President Greg Strubinger said.The topic of the association's bookkeeping has come up frequently at council meetings over the past year.In September 2016, council discussed audit findings from the East Mauch Chunk Firemen's Relief Fund, which included "noncompliance with prior audit recommendations concerning undocumented expenditures, failure to maintain a complete and accurate equipment roster and inadequate minutes of meetings."According to an audit released in August 2016, covering 2012-15, the association had $6,302 in undocumented expenses."Lack of documentation, such as invoices or detailed meeting minutes, make it impossible to determine if the expenditures were made in accordance with Act 118," the audit states.Last month, Frank Lauth, Fairview president, said all of the issues had been straightened out.The association was allocated $8,733 in state aid in 2015.