Usually it’s the other way around, fired people get severance, quitting people get to tell everybody off.
Not if they are fired "for cause"... What raised the question in my mind is that the article says the council was meeting to discuss the chief's severance package, but instead voted to reject his resignation. There is nothing in the article to indicate whether this was supposed to be a vote of confidence, or whether they planned to get rid of him in some other, more humiliating way.