A retired fire chief sits on a bank's board to ask one question: 'Why does that take so long?'

REDMOND — William Oduya spent thirty-two years in the fire service and nine as chief of Deschutes County Fire & Rescue. He has coordinated the night-time evacuation of 8,000 people. He has never worked in a bank. That, he says, is his qualification for sitting on the board of one.

Since 2022 Oduya, 58, has held the seat on Meridian Trust Bank's board that the Portland-based community bank reserves for a 'community representative' with no financial-industry background — a governance practice that is rare among banks of its size and, according to the bank's chair, deliberately uncomfortable.

'He asks the questions the rest of us have stopped noticing,' said Eleanor Hastings, the retired appellate judge who chairs the board. 'In his first meeting he asked why a customer complaint takes nine days to resolve. Nobody had a good answer. Now it takes two.'

Oduya's first request as a director was that the board's quarterly information packet include a summary of every customer complaint the bank received. He was told it would be long. It runs to four pages, and he reads every line. 'The most common complaint at any bank is "why does that take so long?"' he said. 'I'm here to ask what the customer would ask if they were in the room. Usually it's that.'

The arrangement has had measurable effects, the bank says. Complaints attributed to slow service have fallen from 41 percent of the total in 2022 to 19 percent this year, according to chief operating officer Thomas Achebe, who said Oduya's packet 'is the single most-read document in the building after the Red Folder,' the bank's quarterly risk report.

Oduya founded Hearth, a nonprofit that builds housing for seasonal wildland firefighters, in 2021, the year after the Santiam Canyon fires in which two firefighters under his command — Kyle Brennan, 28, and Marisol Vega, 23 — were killed. He names them in every public appearance. Hearth has housed 64 firefighters and broke ground on 24 units in Sisters this month, with Meridian Trust as construction lender. Oduya recused himself from the loan vote.

'A firefighter who can't afford to live in the county she protects is a customer problem too,' he said. 'She's somebody's customer. Somebody said no to her mortgage. I sit on this board so that somebody is sitting in the room when they decide.'