CORAL SPRINGS, FL (Boca Post) (Copyright © 2026) — The Coral Springs Fire Department is marking the retirement of a longtime staff member who spent nearly a quarter-century supporting the agency’s leadership and operations.
Debbie Pringle, who served as Executive Assistant to the Fire Chief, is stepping down after a career that began in October 2001. She first joined the department as a part-time office assistant and later advanced into a senior administrative role, where she worked under three different fire chiefs.
Her position placed her at the center of day-to-day coordination inside one of the city’s primary public safety agencies. The Executive Assistant role supports command staff, manages internal communications, and helps maintain continuity across leadership transitions—functions that often operate outside public view but directly affect how a department runs.
Over the course of her tenure, Pringle received multiple internal and citywide recognitions. She was named Civilian Employee of the Year twice, in 2012 and 2019, and also received the Community Involvement Award in 2019. In 2024, the city recognized her with a City Excellence Award, one of the municipality’s top acknowledgments for employee performance and impact.
Her contributions extended beyond administrative duties. In 2023, Pringle founded the Administrative Professionals Learning Group, an initiative aimed at strengthening professional development and collaboration among administrative staff. Programs like that typically serve as internal support networks, helping departments maintain institutional knowledge and training continuity.
Pringle also led production of the department’s annual report for nearly a decade, including its 2020 edition, which earned formal recognition. Annual reports document departmental activity, staffing, emergency response metrics, and community engagement efforts. They serve both as a public transparency tool and as an internal record for long-term planning.
The Coral Springs Fire Department credited her with helping recognize personnel achievements and maintaining relationships across the organization. Administrative roles like hers often manage award programs, internal events, and documentation that track employee milestones—work that shapes department culture and morale over time.
Her career spans a period of growth and change for Coral Springs, a city in northwest Broward County that relies on its fire department for emergency response, fire suppression, and medical services. Support staff play a key role in ensuring those operations run smoothly, particularly during leadership transitions or periods of expansion.
With Pringle’s retirement, the department will transition responsibilities tied to executive support and internal coordination to other staff or a successor. Maintaining continuity in those functions is essential, particularly in public safety agencies where administrative processes underpin operational readiness.
The department said her impact will remain visible through the systems she helped build and the relationships she developed over more than two decades of service.
Residents typically do not interact directly with administrative personnel, but the structure they maintain affects how quickly departments respond, how resources are managed, and how information flows between leadership and field units.
Pringle’s retirement closes out a long tenure that paralleled the department’s evolution, from early 2000s operations through more recent modernization efforts.
More public safety reporting from the area can be found in Coral Springs News.
