Analysis of the Fire Department Fiasco

Mistakes were made….

This article is a critique of the decisions of the town regarding the problems in the Nottingham Fire and Rescue Department. This article puts the focus on the decisions made by the Board of Selectmen, the town attorney, and the Fire Chief’s supervisor - the Town Administrator. It’s fair to point out that this article’s critique has the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. However, good managers do post-mortems on their big decisions so they can learn from their mistakes. This is a post-mortem.

Supervision of the Fire Chief

How is it that such a bad situation in one of the town’s major departments was not noticed earlier by the Town Administrator? 

We know that former Town Administrator Chris Sterndale was copied on a barrage of written warnings to a single employee that included several petty complaints. Did he not read them? Did he not care? Did he not inquire about what was going on? 

If the Town Administrator was copied on these warnings, presumably that happens for all written warnings. What about the others? 

Perhaps Sterndale knew about the problems in the Fire Department. He surely also knew about complaints about the town’s former Director of Public Works. Perhaps his solution was to become the Town Administrator for the town of Auburn and leave the problems for his successor to discover. 

Based on what has been made public so far there’s no indication that either Sterndale or his successor, Interim Town Administrator John Scruton took any active involvement in the management of the Fire Department. They appear to have been so lacking in knowledge about what was going on in the Fire Department that the investigator didn’t even bother to interview either of them as part of the investigation of their direct report. This is a significant revelation about a deficiency in town management that needs to be addressed.

Deliberations of the Board of Selectmen

The complaints the board heard were serious. While it has not been reported that the complainants threatened the town with a lawsuit, clearly their allegations contained many instances of potential legal liabilities. The board obviously had to act, not only to prevent the town from being sued, but also to address the obvious dysfunction of the department. Even if the six complainants were all lying, that six employees out of a department of 28 would make such serious allegations means that the department was dysfunctional.

We don’t know what alternatives were presented to the board between the presentation of the complaints on the evening of March 20 and the decision on the evening of March 23 to put the Chief and Lieutenant on paid administrative leave while an investigation was conducted, but we’ve all seen how the chosen course of action has turned out so far: tumultuous Board of Selectmen meetings, social media vitriol, residents being put at odds with each other over their differing opinions of the situation, nasty allegations against the selectmen, the destruction of the reputation and careers of two people who are widely regarded to have devoted themselves to the service of Nottingham, a Fire Department full of mistrust, huge unplanned expenses, and horrible publicity about working in town government and safety conditions for town residents. Good luck Nottingham on recruiting anyone for the town’s many open positions. Sad news for anyone trying to sell their home here.

I’ve been involved tangentially or directly in the firings of several executives. I am retired from a career in management. My last role was as a member of the board of directors and Chief Marketing Officer for a small-cap publicly traded company. The CEO reported to the board of directors - which included me. I reported to the CEO.  

What the town did isn’t how one best addresses a management failure of this kind. Whether it was the Interim Town Administrator or the town attorney who proposed and encouraged the course of action the board decided upon - or, much less likely, something members of the board itself came up with - it was a poor choice. 

Obviously, the board had to act. It did not need any more information than what was directly at hand. If six out of 28 employees are making complaints like this, there’s a huge problem in the department, even if all of the complaints are unwarranted. The only need for an investigation would have been had the board decided that they wanted to fire the Chief and Lieutenant and they needed something that they could point to as grounds for doing so. 

While it is perfectly reasonable for town management to desire to fire the Chief based on the allegations, the board appears to have failed to consider the consequences to the town resulting from what the firing process for a fire chief entails under state law. It’s not an employment-at-will position. The town can’t just tell them they’re fired, as in most private-sector jobs. Grounds for dismissal must be documented. Allegations from several employees aren’t enough.

In the early weeks of the investigation the board repeatedly said to the public that they were following the advice of town counsel. If the board chose this course of action just because it was recommended by the town’s attorney, the board was foolish in doing so. Attorneys give legal advice, not management advice. They’re going to tell you about your legal risks. They’re not going to tell you about your operational risks, your financial costs, your budgetary trade-offs, your employee morale risks, and your public relations and reputational risks. That’s not their job. That’s management’s job.

For high-stakes decisions like these, management has to treat the matter like a chess game. They must consider multiple courses of action and think out the longer-term consequences of each alternative. The move that seems initially most appealing may well have unappealing later effects. The move that seems initially unattractive may have much more desirable downstream consequences.

My observation of the board is that it is prone to knee-jerk decisions. On March 20, in the public portion of the same meeting in which the board heard the complaints from the six Fire Department employees, the board decided to ban use of the town seal without the permission of the board. Such a restriction is illegal. Not a single selectman raised any concerns about this recommendation from the Interim Town Manager. They unanimously voted to approve it. I suspect the board made the same kind of process error a couple of hours later that evening after hearing the employee complaints. A good board does not reflexively accept the recommendations of its chief executive officer (Town Administrator) or its legal counsel. For serious matters, a good executive presents alternatives for the board to consider.

Instead of spending lots of money on an interim fire chief, an extra EMT, an investigator, and legal bills, that money could have been deployed to far greater benefit for the town by putting it directly into fixing the problems in the Fire Department. Such a move might not feel as heroic as calling in an investigator, but it has the benefit of generating far less drama. Drama is often a good thing for political leaders and decision-making bodies when the subject is about policy choices. Drama is almost never a good thing when the subject is about personnel or operations issues. Drama tends to beget more drama. 

It’s worth noting that even the investigator’s report made no conclusion with regard to firing either the Chief or Lieutenant. Instead, it gave recommendations about further handling of the situation in the cases of whether they were retained or fired. 

Here’s the course of action I think the Board of Selectmen should have pursued.

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Step 1

The Chief should have been brought in front of their manager (the Town Administrator) and the Board of Selectmen and been told that the board had received a large number of exceptionally serious complaints that the town must address. It is pointless to argue whether the complaints are valid. The very fact that the board received the complaints compels the board to act. 

The Chief is to consider himself on probation. He’s going to be closely monitored not only by his manager, but the town is going to bring in outside experts. The recommendations of the experts will be followed, overriding any of the Chief’s decisions, which are all now subject to being second-guessed. If the Town Administrator finds that the problems in the department persist, he will document them and prepare a case for firing the Chief.

The Chief should be given the option to either accept these conditions or resign. 

As the Chief had the opportunity to resign rather than suffer the investigation, let’s assume that Chief accepts the terms.

Step 2

The Town Administrator engages an HR consultant and an expert in fire department management (perhaps a trainer or a well-respected retired fire chief). They are to investigate all concerns going on in the department, to give recommendations for remediation of those problems, and are involved in implementing those recommendations. The consultants are also charged with determining whether there are problematic employees. Although the HR consultant is to initially focus on the Fire Department, they will take a broader role in addressing issues in other departments as well, particularly the Department of Public Works where there have also been complaints from both employees and the public.

Step 3

The Town Administrator has a meeting with the Chief, Deputy, and the three lieutenants. The issues are outlined to the department’s management. Every member of management is charged with addressing the issues and cooperating with the consultants. If there are any issues the managers are to take them up with the Town Administrator. 

Step 4

The Town Administrator holds a meeting of the entire department outlining the concerns about the operational issues and the involvement of the consultants to address those concerns. All employees are to feel free to confidentially disclose their views of any of the problems with the consultants. The consultants will be making recommendations to the Town Administrator, and will be empowered to effect the approved recommendations. 

Step 5

The Board of Selectmen publicly acknowledges that it has engaged the two consultants, preferably not at the same time. The board will announce that the HR consultant has been engaged to review and improve HR policies, practices, and training across all of the town’s departments. It’s no secret in town that the town has problems with employees behaving inappropriately. 

The fire and rescue consultant will be said to have been brought in to review and improve the Fire Department’s operating procedures, HIPAA compliance procedures, TEMSIS reporting, etc. 

Step 6

The Town Administrator closely follows up on the operations of the department and the remediation efforts devised by the consultants.

Step 7

The HR consultant does work with all town departments regarding inappropriate employee behavior so it doesn’t look like the Fire Department is being singled out. Besides, the other departments likely need it as much as the Fire Department needs it.

Step 8

If the managers of the Fire Department cooperate, the problems get solved. If the Chief or any other managers obstructs the process, the insubordination is documented by the consultants. The documentation can then be used to justify terminations.

Step 9

If the Town Administrator and the Board of Selectmen are still unhappy with the Chief’s performance but have been unable to fire him, the Chief should be told that at the next annual election and appointment of the Fire Chief, the board will not re-appoint him regardless of whether he is elected. 

Step 10

The two consultants should be engaged to review and improve the Fire Department’s bylaws and the town’s personnel policies to better address the possibility of complaints against managers and department heads. The existing ones have been demonstrated to be inadequate. Changes to the way the Chief is selected should be considered.

Possible Outcomes

It’s always tricky to predict how people are going to behave. Based on the information provided by the complainants and private communications to me regarding the Chief’s reputation, he’s said to be a my-way-or-the-highway style of manager. The outlined process removes the ability to use that style. It’s psychological torture. I would predict a manager long-wedded to that style of management would find these new circumstances intolerable. He’d either resign after experiencing them or he’d act out in such a way as to provide documented grounds for dismissal. On the other hand, the experience of being constantly second-guessed and over-ruled - the same behavior that the employees complained about - might produce a transformative experience allowing the manager to better understand the problems his management style had produced. Any of these results could be viewed as successful outcomes. All of them entail far less drama.

If the Chief instead chose to resign, the consultants should still be brought in, as the complaints covered a lot more than just the behavior of the Chief. In this situation, their role would be much more collaborative with the new Chief. Most likely the person chosen for that would have been the Deputy Chief. As the Deputy Chief is most likely entangled with the existing management systems that were subjects of some of the complaints, the Deputy would probably need the help of the consultants to address them. 

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Other Mistakes

In addition to the error of choosing to do an investigation, many other mistakes were made. In particular, there was a pattern of mistakes regarding maintaining the appearance of the fairness of the process. Mistakes like these are much more likely to happen in high-drama situations. Justice and fairness are not objective outcomes; they are subjective evaluations of processes. 

It was a mistake to send the Police Chief to remove the Lieutantn in the middle of her shift. The optics were terrible, as it implied the commission of a crime. It was unnecessarily cruel and appeared to be intentionally vindictive. The action was a public defamation of character such that the town may be liable to a lawsuit. On top of that, it was cowardly to have someone else do the unpleasant task. Either the Town Administrator and/or one or more of the selectmen should have done it. 

Perhaps even better if the board knew on the night of March 20 they were going to put the Lieutenant on administrative leave would have been for the Town Administrator to have intervened to change the Lieutenant's schedule and instead have brought her to the board meeting on March 23 in which the Chief was informed of being put on administrative leave.

It was a mistake to fail to vet the investigator. The investigator’s Twitter postings compromised her appearance of impartiality and public respect for the credibility of the investigation. 

It was a mistake not to follow existing procedures and protocols for complaint handling for something so serious as to entail an investigation. This gave the impression of unfairness and it undermined the town’s credibility. 

It was a mistake not to have informed the public from the beginning that six employees complained. It was a mistake to have ever said the complaints were anonymous - which they were not. This allowed the public to have the impression that the town was overreacting to a single anonymous complaint that wasn’t even written down. This harmed the board’s credibility. It gave rise to rampant speculation, fueling additional drama.

The redaction of publicly released documents was poor. So poor that the town may have exposed itself to a lawsuit for invasion of privacy, perhaps even libel. Why is a page of the investigator’s report missing? Why are the investigator’s recommendations redacted? Whose privacy could be infringed in the recommendations? It’s not privileged attorney-client material because the investigator isn’t in the role of attorney. The taxpayers paid for those recommendations. Why don’t we get to see them? Did the Board of Selectmen disregard the recommendations and ask for them to be redacted?

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Conclusion

This drama isn’t over yet. If you missed the Independence Day fireworks, come to Monday’s Board of Selectmen meeting. A presentation from former Fire Chief Jaye Vilchock is on the public agenda. [Correction: While “Jaye Vilchock” is on the agenda as an appointment I have it from multiple sources that the former Fire Chief is not presenting. The person referred to may be the former Fire Chief’s son who has the same name and does not use “Jr.” The son is not a Nottingham resident.]

He’s entitled to a hearing in Rockingham Superior Court if he wants one. Surely his attorney is looking for anything the town can be sued for.

While all of this drama has been great for increasing the number of readers of this blog, I’m now nostalgic about writing about citizens being angry that a snowplow destroyed their mailboxes and parents being upset that playground equipment is in disrepair. 

A picture of some other town’s fire truck on fire. A metaphor for Nottingham’s Fire Department.