Contracts Need to Be Fair to All Sides in Plainfield Fire Protection District

[image taken from PFPD website]

It’s been a long time since I made the time to put a notice up on Patch regarding videos I make at the meetings of the Board of Trustees for the PFPD (and other boards). I have been trying to keep up with putting the videos themselves on YouTube, though, figuring that’s the more important and useful piece. Three days ago I posted a video that, as of this writing, has already been viewed more than 150 times just due to word of mouth in the community. I struck a match, I guess.

In Public Comment (what the PFPD calls Open Forum), I spoke about my concerns over what I see as an unfair and damaging compensation package and reporting structure being detailed out in the contract for the Director of HR and Finance in the district.

I hear there are people who don’t like what I said. My response: If you think that either I’m the problem or there isn’t one, then the problem ­­is you.

Here are the video links (public comment at about 50 second mark or so of Part 1), followed by the text of my comment. It is NOT a verbatim transcript (you can only hear exactly what I said if you go listen to it), but was what I read from during the meeting and on the spot I sometimes changed phrasing, etc. It’s pretty close, though:

PFPD mtng 12Jan2016 part 1 of 2 (30 mins total)

PFPD mtng 12Jan2016 part 2 of 2 (9 mins total)

The next regular meeting of the board of trustees would be on Tuesday, February 9, 2016. Website info from PFPD found here: PFPD Meetings page.

As always, should you have any questions regarding this content, please feel free to contact me at radical4plainfield@gmail.com or via regular mail at Polito, PO Box 1071, Plainfield, IL 60544.

TEXT OF POLITO PUBLIC COMMENT OF JANUARY 12TH 2016 TO PFPD BOARD OF TRUSTEES:

I am a very strong believer in paying to support the BEST we can get in services and equipment for fire protection and emergency services. I support with my heart and wallet MY PFPD. I would defend the good men and women of this district right down to the ground, and I have. I expect this board, no matter who the people are who come and go in service here, to do more than rubber stamp contracts based on affection and relationships instead of needs and qualifications. That’s not good enough. Many of you are not just experienced in the fire service, but you have backgrounds in business and should use them.

A couple of months ago, I made some staff and a couple of board members aware of my concerns as a taxpayer about the contract this body issued and has been renewing without much review for the HR/Finance Director. As it looks to me today, there has been no responsive action about those concerns, except that I must be on to something that is making someone nervous, because I have heard a lot of trash talk about me and my husband. THAT only made me ask, “What is someone afraid of me knowing or saying?” So, I went looking for answers to my question.

The first meeting where you were going to tackle contracts, it got tabled. The next meeting—scheduled at an odd time and with the agenda/notice not posted beyond these doors until less than 24-hours prior, it got tabled again. Further, the mistake was made of violating the OMA by not even putting public comment on the agenda and by not correcting that mistake during the meeting. So, you you’re going to get dinged on that.

Back to my concerns with the contract I’m using as an example. What I see when I read the contract that has been in place for several years is that:

1. We are all, every taxpayer, paying about $121,000 a year, plus benefits, plus some truly abusive and damaging “fringe benefits”, for the position of HR/Finance Dir.—in December of this year, there was a published list of the top 10 salaries in the Village of Plainfield Administration. Let me point out the following about how this salary compares. Our Chief of Police only makes about $4,000 more and the Village’s Dir of Mgmt Svcs only makes $2,000 more. The Village’s HR Dir makes 13 grand less.

2. That 121K salary is not at all on par with any prevailing wage data I can find, and I’ve looked. High compensations tend to go to people in the PRIVATE sector, or go to people bringing added value either through having serious chops from prior job experience or being VERY highly educated in the industry, or who have to work in a very large organization. None of that is the case here.

3. There are no serious high-level educational or experiential requirements to earn that high salary as this contract stands and we are indeed getting none. We require High School Diploma for 121K!?

4. The board seems to have no mechanism in place for serious and regular performance evaluation of the job. How does this board know that this job is being done well? How do you measure performance and what are your metrics for evaluation? Is this position supervised at all, and if so, how?

5. There is a clause here that says that the district—the taxpayers—will pay the full healthcare costs of the employee and spouse if the employee retires before age 65! WOW, that is “fringe”. There is a clause that lifts the accrual cap on sick time for this position and allows buy-back at 50% of hourly rate at retirement up to 1440 hrs—right now, that could be about $42,000—further, since the time isn’t subject to normal cap, any other hours can be applied to fatten up the IMRF pension of this person. A publicly funded pension. Did legal counsel even review and advise on this contract?

6. There is no requirement that the Finance Dir or complete a CAFR, or Comprehensive Annual Financial Report—and that’s shameful. I was told by staff that they “don’t have time for that!”. Really, with a director and THREE full-time admin assistants all reporting to the Dir?!

7. There is a clause in this contract that breaks all best-practice guidelines for organizational structure and effective management, i.e., the HR/Fiance Dir reports NOT to the lead admin in the district, the Fire Chief, but to this board—that is like nothing I’ve seen in any successful organization, anywhere. Among other things, it leads to problems in chain of command and leadership, it diminishes any chief’s effectiveness, it subjects staff to undue influence and potential for tampering with staff and administration from a political body, etc. Where would this sort of poor organizational structure be tolerated? Why is it not just tolerated, but chosen in this fire district? My biggest problem with the org chart here is that the HR Director has as her direct report one of her children. THAT needs to stop, YESTERDAY. That is an incredible conflict of interest for a publicly funded unit of government.

8. I see in clause 2 of the contract, under DUTIES, that the director will not only basically be able to ignore the fire chief by reporting directly to this board, but that “work will be performed under general supervision”—by whom? What does that even mean in practical terms? And, “is subject to standard checks, observations, and evaluations”—how does that work, exactly, in terms of staff management, day in and day out?

Let me give you my own real life example of how bad this goes and how fast. I got a tour of the place once from Chief Riddle and I’ve had occasion to view the open office setting since then. Several of the desks are cluttered, which I guess you can call empowering staff to personalize their workspace. But, in that clutter are scented CANDLES—lit and burning! Really? The office space in a fire district allows the open burning of scented candles!? Put aside how unprofessional it is to treat your work space like it’s your coffee table or mantle at home. What about the safety and modeling of that? Do you guys even know that goes on? If you do and you’ve not put a stop to it—because you’ve set in motion a structure where you’ve got two lead admins who should be bringing it to you—shame on you. If you didn’t know, then this goes exactly to my point that you have no way to measure management performance and quality. And, shame on that situation.

When you review or write ANY contract you need to ask: How will this board measure and document performance? What internal audits do we have in place and how is our compliance? How does this role meet the goals of the district in its mission of public service both fiscally and operationally?

If you don’t have good answers to those questions, you have no business cutting that deal. From the professional world I know, you may as well farm out your HR/Finance functions to a 3rd party provider for a fee. For the number of full-time staff in this district and the relative simplicity of the organizational structure, you could get someone to handle most HR functions and all Finance functions for less than 100K a year, plus we’d then pay no benefit costs and you’d likely be able to take the district into the 21st century as far as reporting and analysis and save on office space and equipment, etc. The few necessary HR functions you’d need to do in-house could be handled within the remaining structure.

Do what you’re here to do, and do it right or at least better.

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