Amidst an ongoing effort to choose a new chief of police for Madison, city officials are hopeful Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's recent appointment of Shiva Bidar-Sielaff to the Police and Fire Commission will break a deadlock among members and facilitate a mutual agreement by October.
Bidar-Sielaff, who works at UW Hospital as manager of interpreter services and minority community relations, was sworn in on Tuesday at a City Council meeting.
According to mayoral spokesperson Melanie Conklin, Bidar-Sielaff was chosen for the position because of her involvement in previous community organizations. Her experiences include time with the Public Health Commission, the Latino Support Network and the Latino Health Council.
\She's very smart, shows good judgment, weighs situations carefully and has other impressive credentials,"" Conklin said.
The commission, which was originally supposed to have chosen a replacement for retired chief Richard Williams by the beginning of August, has been deadlocked for some time between Acting Chief Noble Wray and Capt. Cheri Maples. Sgt. Mike Koval is the third competitor for the position.
Scott Herrick, an attorney for the Police and Fire Commission, said Bidar-Sielaff will be given access to all information available on each of the candidates, including investigative reports, application forms, and results from substantive tests.
After all the information is reviewed, Bidar-Sielaff will conduct a new series of interviews with each of the candidates to get a personal feel for each one and then enter into a series of deliberations with the other four panel members. While the eventual goal of the discussions is to break the deadlock in order to provide a decision sometime in mid-October, Bidar-Sielaff said she hopes the eventual result will be a unanimous decision for the new chief.
""I think that suddenly having five people will make the decision easier, because it's no longer an even number,"" Bidar-Sielaff said. ""Everybody would like to make a decision, but it's important to make the right decision.""
""It is her hope that this will be more than a vote breaking the tie,"" Conklin said. ""Hopefully [a] new perspective will break up what was a deadlock ... and decide something the commission-all of them-can feel good about.\
