Conflicts Between the Fire Chief and Interim Town Administrator

Right-to-know requests have revealed several conflicts between the town’s former Interim Town Administrator, John Scruton, and former Fire Chief, Jaye Vilchock.

Conflict About Performance Evaluations

The earliest email record of conflict starts on February 9 with an email from the Interim Town Administrator to the Fire Chief regarding the “Personnel Plan” and that - in bold and underlined - it is to be noted applies to the Fire Chief.

The Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, who was cc’d on the email, responded by asking if the Interim Town Administrator had discussed this with the Fire Chief or whether this was coming as a surprise, suggesting that she was aware that the two town employees had previous communication issues. 

The subject line, “Re: Goals,” and the attachment “Self-evaluation.doc” implies that at least one of the subjects was a performance evaluation. There’s a later email on this subject saying that the Chief was refusing to do a self-evaluation.

However, according to the same email, it appears that self-evaluations were merely a proposed addition to the personnel policy, yet the Interim Town Administrator appears to be trying to require them as if they were already policy.

The Chairman of the Board of Selectmen appears to agree with the Interim Town Administrator that a self-evaluation from the Fire Chief should be enforced, but thinks addressing the issue about the town’s overtime policy needs to be done first. 

Conflict About Overtime Policies

The conflict between the Interim Town Administrator and the Fire Chief about overtime has been previously reported in the Nottingham Blog. In summary, the overtime issue arose with the addition of more full-time staff at the Fire Department, which led the department to switch to 24-hour shifts, following which the department instituted an overtime policy that was not in accordance with the overtime policy in the town’s personnel manual. Upon discovering this, the Interim Town Administrator blamed the Fire Chief and proposed a solution. 

Conflict between the two escalated as the Fire Chief wanted to inquire with the fire departments of other towns to learn what policies had worked best elsewhere. The Interim Town Administrator instead wanted his proposal adopted immediately.

Conflict About Ice Golf

The day after the conflict between the Interim Town Administrator and the Fire Chief about self-evaluations arose, another conflict began. This one was about an ice golf event being advertised by the Raymond American Legion. The event was originally scheduled for February 4th, but on January 30 it was decided to reschedule it to February 18 due to exceptionally cold weather.

The email chain begins with an inquiry from the town of Raymond’s Fire Chief about the proposed event.

Nottingham’s Fire Chief responded, saying “no ice is safe.”

The next day the Interim Town Administrator responded, appearing to overrule the Fire Chief, and giving criteria for safe ice conditions.

Nottingham’s Fire Chief - whose department would have to rescue people from the freezing waters if the ice gave way - responded privately to the Interim Town Administrator, saying:

The Interim Town Administrator responded the next morning saying that he was “requiring them to verify the thickness of the ice.”

On February 14 the sponsors relocated the event to Nottingham Sand & Gravel.

Formal Complaint to the Board of Selectmen about the Interim Town Administrator

There were at least these three points of conflict, all in a short period of time, preceding the Fire Chief’s formal complaint to the board about the Interim Town Administrator that the Chief initiated on February 15.

This complaint was heard in the board’s non-public session on February 27, according to the unsealed minutes of that session.

Other Working Relationship Issues

Another sign of the poor relationship between the Fire Chief and the Interim Town Administrator appears in the following email, in which the Interim Town Administrator appears to think it is likely that the Chief would give “pushback,” “drag his feet” or “outright refuse” necessitating “the board to give him a written order.” As there were no follow-up emails on this, presumably the Fire Chief provided the information. 

Analysis and Commentary

[These conflicts are all variations on a theme. They begin with the former Interim Town Administrator wanting quick action, usually through adopting and implementing his proposals. The former Fire Chief resists the quick adoption of the proposals, about which some reasons are recorded in the Chief’s responses. For this and other reasons, the former Interim Town Administrator repeatedly accuses the former Fire Chief of causing problems and of insubordination.

Meanwhile, both of them know that the Interim’s contract with the town will be over in just a few weeks. This perhaps may have led the Chief to try to delay things until the arrival of the new Town Administrator on the expectation that this would put an end to the conflict. Correspondingly, it appears that the Interim was intensifying the urgency of his efforts because of his impending departure. However, as the next article will show, something other than what appears was going on.]