After more than 47 years in the fire service, Southern Marin Fire Chief Chris Tubbs is preparing to hang up his helmet. Tubbs, who has led the Southern Marin Fire Protection District for 11 years, has submitted his resignation and is set to retire effective July 1. His timeline gives the district’s board several months to manage a leadership transition for Mill Valley, Sausalito, and nearby neighborhoods. District officials announced the move this week and described it as a planned retirement, marking the end of a long public-safety career.
According to SFGATE, the Board of Directors says it will conduct “an open and competitive recruitment process” to select the next chief. The brief notice, distributed via Bay City News Service, confirmed the July 1 effective date but did not outline an interim staffing plan. District leaders pushed the announcement through their public online news feed.
Chief Tubbs' record
Tubbs is widely credited with guiding the district through interagency annexations, wildfire risk mitigation efforts and long-term strategic and infrastructure planning. The district’s biography notes that he holds executive certificates from MIT, Harvard and Cornell and is a past president of the California Fire Chiefs Association. Those credentials reflect decades spent in both front-line operations and regional policy work, according to the Southern Marin Fire Protection District.
District footprint and staffing
The Southern Marin district covers about 25 square miles and serves Mill Valley, Sausalito, a portion of Tiburon, Tamalpais Valley and the Marin Headlands. The district profile lists a population of roughly 41,490 residents and about 95 full-time staff positions, with governance handled by a seven-member elected board. Taken together, those numbers show that Tubbs’ retirement will touch a relatively compact but fully staffed emergency agency that straddles both incorporated cities and surrounding unincorporated neighborhoods, per Marin LAFCo.
Search for a successor
The Board has signaled it will open a competitive recruitment process and has several months to run the search before Tubbs’ July 1 exit, according to SFGATE. Since 2020, the district has shared an executive management structure with the City of Mill Valley, a partnership the city notes could shape both the pool of candidates and how the transition is handled day to day. That shared-services setup means the board may consider internal candidates from the joint leadership team as well as outside applicants with regional experience, per the City of Mill Valley.
Board discussions about recruitment are expected at regularly scheduled meetings and will appear in the district’s public notices. In a brief announcement on the district website, officials again framed Tubbs’ departure as a planned retirement after a long career and pledged to maintain continuity of emergency services through the summer transition, according to the Southern Marin Fire Protection District.
