Published: February 23, 2008 07:12 am
Gloucester mayor vows to find money for police, fire audit
Staff writer
Mayor Carolyn Kirk yesterday said she would find money to pay for a full independent audit of the two uniformed, $6 million public safety departments - police and fire - as a prelude to possible reform.
Kirk said the appropriation would be introduced during spring budgeting, which would push the research project, mandated by the City Charter, to perhaps a year from now.
But Council President Bruce Tobey said councilors could save time by preparing the project's specifications before funding was voted.
Until the audits are done and studied, Kirk said it would be premature to consider changing the method defined by Civil Service rules for selecting chiefs from inside the sibling departments which, for different reasons, have become the more or less continuous objects of attention by reformers, led by Councilor Jason Grow.
"We need to be clear what the problem is," said Kirk, who did similar consulting for banks and financial service companies before winning the mayor's office last fall. "We need an independent audit; we need perspective."
Grow has campaigned to remove the chiefs from Civil Service and has announced the intention to push councilors to consider the step at Tuesday's meeting despite passionate opposition from police officers and firefighters and the reticence of his colleagues.
After the council's Ordinance and Administration Committee threw cold water on that idea last week, Grow wrote and distributed to councilors and the mayor a lengthy treatise on the benefits of opening the selection to applicants from outside the forces.
Tobey credited Grow with "keeping the issue front and center."
The police are organized into two unions - for superior officers and patrolmen - and the firefighters into one. Only the chiefs, isolated and embattled constantly by union complaints, are not union members.
The patrolmen's union has criticized their chief John Beaudette for favoritism and punishment assignments of harsh training, while the firefighters union, especially in the last years of John Bell's mayoralty, conducted a campaign to undercut the authority of fire Chief Barry McKay.
The fiscal viability of the Fire Department under existing union rules has become a cause celebre, especially since the year's $400,000 appropriation of overtime was exhausted last fall, leaving McKay without the resources to bring enough off-duty firefighters back to work to keep even one outlying station opened on two recent shifts, including Super Bowl Sunday night.
The closing of all three outlying stations left only the Central Station crew, 12 firefighters, to cover the entire city for fires and medical emergencies. It was the first time in 16 years staffing fell that low. Both the Police and Fire Departments continue to operate out of headquarters that are significantly outdated and in need of replacement.
The problems in the Police Department came into focus last year as the city wrestled with the effort to resolve the nearly two-year, paid administrative leave of Patrolman Stephen Lamberis - the only African-American on the municipal payroll - for reasons that were kept largely hidden behind the veil of Civil Service procedure.
At a tension-filled, climactic council meeting, Tobey and Councilor Jackie Hardy refused to participate in an executive session during which a decision was made to pay Lamberis $25,000 to settle the case, which dragged on while he received $110,000 in pay and benefits that accrued during his suspension.
With the vote to end the Lamberis case came promises to fix the department.
"Problems are still existing down there," Tobey said. Councilor Sefatia Romeo said she was committed to "overseeing that department; write it down."
In the days leading up to the meeting, Grow was especially critical, saying he believed there were "demons" in the Police Department that needed to be "exorcised."
"What I'm concerned about," he said, "is closing the door on these issues. Something in the department is broken."
Kirk has solicited advice on the audit from state Fire Marshal Stephen Coan, with whom she consulted while he was in Gloucester overseeing the investigation of the Lorraine Apartments fire in December.
She said she favored a "peer review format," which compares the organization and operation of the department to those of other similar communities.
In her second term on the School Committee, Kirk began researching the Fire Department on her own before beginning her mayoral campaign. She spent an overnight shift at headquarters where she began building relationships.
Her campaign team included Deputy Chief Miles Schlichte, who led a large contingent of dissidents in a protest against McKay's leadership, and she was backed by members of the firefighters union.
In an interview, she quoted McKay, who had advised the council committee against trying to fix the department's problems by eliminating the Civil Service method of choosing the next chief from among inside candidates.
Kirk said, "Barry McKay said, 'Changing the guy at the top isn't going to change the culture.'"
All three public safety unions are working under expired contracts. Kirk said she would proceed toward settlement of all three regardless of the status of the audit.
"Business shouldn't stop for the audit," said Kirk, who revealed that she has on her desk four grievances of contract violations, three from firefighters and one from the patrolmen.
Tobey agreed, saying, "There'll always be another round of negotiations."
In his 1,800-word treatise, Grow argues the complicated Civil Service rules that require chiefs to come from the ranks and discourage removal except for quasi-judicial findings of cause disserve the city.
"Because of the reticence of the rank and file to bring forward complaints or concerns about poor management, an increasingly unhealthy and fractionalized culture festers behind the scenes," Grow wrote.
Although the City Charter requires management audits of each city agency every eight years, none were done for decades until then Council President James Destino pushed and got one for the $35 million School Department in 2004.
Spurred by the school audit, then Councilor Jeff Worthley, and later Tobey, pushed for the audit of the Department of Public Works. That audit, for $64,000, provided a detailed program for gaining management control of a sprawling $14 million agency.
Implementation meetings have continued since the audit was delivered early last year.
Many recommendations, including upgrades in beach maintenance, have been implemented and lauded by department employees, managers and the public.
Destino and Kirk, the finalists in last year's mayoral campaign, agreed on the need to put the public safety agencies, described by Tobey as operating in parallel universes, under similar independent examination.
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Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
