*This story, along with a couple others I wrote about it, eventually led to the indictment of GOP pollster Rod McCulloch in DuPage County. The case is still in the courts.
Township assessor defends petitions amid forgery claims
February 04 2005
James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer
If you believe Jim Gumm's nominating petitions for re-election as Milton Township assessor, he has the full support of Frank Haywood.
The Wheaton resident seems to support Gumm so much he signed Gumm's nominating petitions twice: once as Frank Haywood and again, directly below that, as Frank Hayward, at the same address.
The problem is the real Frank Haywood says he didn't pen either signature.
"Whoever did this was pretty dumb," he said. "If you're trying to hide something like two fake signatures, you'd think you'd bury them someplace other than one after the other."
That example, and possibly hundreds of others, are behind claims of fraud in a pending objection to Gumm's petitions.
If it proves true, Gumm could be booted off the April 5 ballot.
An unscientific check of the signatures suggests at least some might be false. Of eight people contacted, all said they never signed a Gumm petition.
A signature allegedly belonging to Scott Kozas seems particularly questionable. He's lived in Texas for the past year and a half, said his father, Michael, whose signature appears directly above on one petition.
"Jim Gumm? I don't even know who he is," Michael Kozas said.
Fellow Wheaton resident Wayne Hill also denied signing Gumm's petition.
"I don't even know where (Milton Township) is," Hill said.
Consultant Rod McCulloch obtained most of the nearly 750 signatures in question and said no one should be surprised by a few mistakes.
"There are errors on every set of petitions ever filed," he said.
McCulloch said he and a crew worked for four days during a snowstorm to get the names. He said he either personally obtained them or was within 15 feet of the signer.
It's not uncommon for someone to sign a fake name, McCulloch said. He's even seen rival campaigns send out people to sign phony names.
Keri-Lyn Krafthefer, the attorney for the objector, Joe Nesbitt, also noted that residents from the same streets appear on several different pages of petitions. That suggests an illogical effort of jumping block-to-block rather than door-to-door, she said.
McCulloch said those are the words of someone ignorant to the process.
"That's just stupid and a stupid complaint," he said. The multiple addresses are the result of workers taking breaks to get warm, he said. "For (them) to think that someone's going to walk for five hours on a street during a blizzard just shows the amateurishness of the complaint," he said. "It's just unfortunate that I've gotten caught up in this web of hatred they have for (Gumm)."
For his part, Gumm said he's certain the petitions circulated by 14 other volunteers are genuine.
What's really behind the objection, Gumm said, is politics. He said witnesses told him Milton Township Trustee Jim Flickinger submitted the objection with Nesbitt, though Flickinger's name does not appear on it.
Gumm said Flickinger wants to see him off the ballot so Flickinger can take credit for getting Gumm booted.
That effort began back when Gumm says Flickinger helped manufacture a sexual harassment claim against Gumm back in 2001. Flickinger is one of several defendants in a federal lawsuit Gumm filed, claiming a clandestine effort to smear his name to get him removed from office. All the defendants deny the allegations.
"This isn't going to stop until I walk away, and I'm not going to walk away," he said. "All I'm looking for is the opportunity to get on the ballot. Why not let the people make the choice?"
Flickinger declined to comment.
Gumm's ballot fate could be decided at a hearing, which will likely occur next week. The hearing panel would consist of township Supervisor Chris Heidorn, Clerk Arlene DeMotte and Trustee Barbara Murphy. But Murphy and Heidorn are also defendants in Gumm's suit. If they are dismissed or recuse themselves, the next most senior trustee, Ken McNatt, would replace one of them. But all trustees are potential witnesses in Gumm's federal suit.
If the township can't form its own hearing body, DuPage County Chief Judge Robert Kilander must appoint a hearing panel, said Doreen Nelson, assistant director of the DuPage election commission.
Nelson said the judge would possibly draw from members of the election commission's electoral board.
Wednesday
Watchdog: Is official a ghost payroller?
Is official a money saver or ghost payroller?
February 13 2005
James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer
By now, Ron Smith should be used to fighting for his job.
Smith is a code enforcement officer for Milton Township - a position that doesn't even exist in neighboring townships.
While he defends his post, saying he's called on to handle reports of illegally draining sump pumps, abandoned cars or greenery obstructing a line of sight on a township road, his critics say he's nothing more than a politically connected "ghost payroller" collecting a township salary for
work the county should handle.
Smith is an Illinois Republican Central Committeeman whose vote played a role in naming Andy McKenna the new leader of the state party. Smith is also known as a friend of former Illinois Senate President James "Pate" Philip.
Current township Trustee Don Sender of Wheaton goes as far as to call Smith a "ghost payroller."
The battle over the $18,000-a-year job will return to the spotlight in April when the decision to rehire Smith will fall under the power of a new township highway commissioner.
The past
The debate over Smith's job began to burn a little hotter in 2001 when Township Assessor Jim Gumm was accused of sexual harassment. Gumm believes Smith helped fabricate the charges to get him tossed out of office.
The township settled the lawsuit with Gumm's accusers despite his protests. Gumm is now suing Smith, several township officials and Philip for what Gumm believes was a clandestine group effort to smear him.
To head off any confrontations between Smith and Gumm, Smith was banned by the township's insurance carrier from entering town hall during business or lunch hours, said Barbara Murphy, township board member.
"It was strictly just to let things cool down for awhile," she said. "I frankly didn't like it because Ron is a citizen, and he had paperwork to do for his job, but he wasn't able to come in the building anymore. I thought, 'Doggone it, just let Jim Gumm behave for a change.'"
Hank Kruse, who was township supervisor at the time, paints a different picture, more in line with Gumm's lawsuit.
Gumm claims the defendants conspired to fabricate harassment claims against him in retaliation for raising assessments on the properties of the defendants' friends. Smith denies those claims and says he was a whistleblower who made sure women in the assessor's office were treated with respect.
But Kruse said Smith was an "unstable" employee who made physical threats against Gumm and was thus the "cause of great acrimony."
"I made it clear he was not allowed in the building," Kruse said. "If I'd had the power to terminate him, I would have."
Even now, Smith is under orders not to enter the assessor's offices at township hall.
Regardless of his role in the harassment claims and the Gumm lawsuit, Smith defends his job as an appointed part-time employee. He believes he has a solid track record of doing his job whenever called upon.
Vagueness of job
Smith, a Lombard resident, works without benefits for up to 600 hours per year at a salary of $18,000, the equivalent of about $30 per hour.
He was appointed to the post in 1999 because township officials thought, as a former township supervisor, he would know local laws, Smith said.
He's also secretary of the Illinois Republican Party and a longtime activist in the DuPage GOP.
Part of Sender's objection is that apparently no one keeps track of what Smith does.
For one, he doesn't write tickets to violators.
"We try to be informal," Smith said. "We don't want to give people fines. We just want to take care of the problem."
He also doesn't file reports of his township work.
Smith said because he can only work 600 hours a year, or roughly 2 1/2 hours a day, there's not enough time to write reports.
He does keep the message slips taken whenever someone calls the township with a problem that falls under his duties.
"That's basically my record as to what I've been doing," Smith said.
He couldn't say how many of those slips he receives in an average month.
"It depends on the time of year," he said.
During his recent reappointment, Smith held up a 2 1/2-inch thick, multicolored stack of phone message slips as evidence of his work. But the stack doesn't reflect all his work since 1999, he said, because he usually tosses a slip when the issue has been dead for six months or so.
Murphy admits the system for tracking Smith's time is flawed.
"I have no idea how to verify his hours," she said. "But how do you know when anyone is really working when they have a desk job?"
But she defends Smith, saying she hears him receive calls when he volunteers with her at DuPage County GOP headquarters.
"I hear him get calls all the time," she said. "I know he works."
Necessary job?
Addison, Wayne, York and Winfield townships all report they rely on county employees to solve the same problems Smith handles for Milton Township.
The county has six inspectors in its zoning and drainage departments. Plus, the sheriff's office has enforcement deputies with power to write tickets for things such as abandoned vehicles.
Residents in Milton Township pay an extra tax to help cover salaries for the deputies, but they remain under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office.
Murphy said that's where the cost savings come in.
"Ron's job cuts down on taking time away from our people who really need to be out on the roads," she said. "Do you want your patrolmen to take time knocking on people's doors to tell them when water is backing up out of the big pipes on the sides of the roads? I would rather see them spending their time on patrol."
Milton workers referred all questions about the sheriff's deputies to Township Supervisor Chris Heidorn, who defends Smith's job as a "citizen-friendly" method of enforcing township-specific codes.
Heidorn said having the sheriff's officers do Smith's job would be a waste of their enforcement duties, and county inspectors lack the knowledge of township codes to do the job.
As far as the quality of Smith's work, "if there were ever any question about Mr. Smith's performance, I'm certain the highway commissioner would have advised the board of his dissatisfaction," said Heidorn in an e-mailed statement. "Instead, we have received only the highest recommendations of Mr. Smith."
Mike Dutton, the current highway commissioner, submitted a letter in support of Smith, but declined to talk about Smith's township job.
"I'm going to be out of there in four months," Dutton said in January. "I don't want to get involved."
Township Trustee Ken McNatt defends Smith as someone who "does a pretty good job."
Sheriff's deputies didn't do as good a job enforcing the codes Smith deals with when it was their responsibility, McNatt said, adding it shouldn't matter how other townships handle such work.
"Why do we have to care what the other townships do?" he said.
Trustee James Flickinger echoed McNatt and Murphy's sentiments.
Despite Smith's supporters, Sender's objections remain. He still questions the amount of work Smith does and the scant proof of the hours he keeps.
In hindsight, Sender said he regrets not making a close examination of the 2 1/2-inch thick stack of phone messages to make sure they were genuine.
Sender, who has voted against Smith each year, believes his stance against Smith and support of Gumm resulted in Sender also not being slated for re-election by the GOP. But he doesn't regret either position.
"I voted against Ron Smith every time," Sender said. "He's a troublemaker."
The future
While Smith successfully won enough votes from the Milton Township board in December to keep his job for another year, he has promised to resign in April when a new highway township commissioner is appointed, he says, so he or she can put a new team in place.
The man who's all but certain to become Smith's new boss is fellow Milton Township Republican Precinct Committeeman Gary Muehlfelt, the party's nominee for highway commissioner.
Muehlfelt declined comment for this report while he grieves a recent death in the family.
Flickinger, Murphy and McNatt all backed Smith for reemployment in December.
"He just really wants to do a good job," Murphy said. "He's a hard worker, and he's honest. To me, his job is the kind of thing that saves the taxpayers money."
February 13 2005
James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer
By now, Ron Smith should be used to fighting for his job.
Smith is a code enforcement officer for Milton Township - a position that doesn't even exist in neighboring townships.
While he defends his post, saying he's called on to handle reports of illegally draining sump pumps, abandoned cars or greenery obstructing a line of sight on a township road, his critics say he's nothing more than a politically connected "ghost payroller" collecting a township salary for
work the county should handle.
Smith is an Illinois Republican Central Committeeman whose vote played a role in naming Andy McKenna the new leader of the state party. Smith is also known as a friend of former Illinois Senate President James "Pate" Philip.
Current township Trustee Don Sender of Wheaton goes as far as to call Smith a "ghost payroller."
The battle over the $18,000-a-year job will return to the spotlight in April when the decision to rehire Smith will fall under the power of a new township highway commissioner.
The past
The debate over Smith's job began to burn a little hotter in 2001 when Township Assessor Jim Gumm was accused of sexual harassment. Gumm believes Smith helped fabricate the charges to get him tossed out of office.
The township settled the lawsuit with Gumm's accusers despite his protests. Gumm is now suing Smith, several township officials and Philip for what Gumm believes was a clandestine group effort to smear him.
To head off any confrontations between Smith and Gumm, Smith was banned by the township's insurance carrier from entering town hall during business or lunch hours, said Barbara Murphy, township board member.
"It was strictly just to let things cool down for awhile," she said. "I frankly didn't like it because Ron is a citizen, and he had paperwork to do for his job, but he wasn't able to come in the building anymore. I thought, 'Doggone it, just let Jim Gumm behave for a change.'"
Hank Kruse, who was township supervisor at the time, paints a different picture, more in line with Gumm's lawsuit.
Gumm claims the defendants conspired to fabricate harassment claims against him in retaliation for raising assessments on the properties of the defendants' friends. Smith denies those claims and says he was a whistleblower who made sure women in the assessor's office were treated with respect.
But Kruse said Smith was an "unstable" employee who made physical threats against Gumm and was thus the "cause of great acrimony."
"I made it clear he was not allowed in the building," Kruse said. "If I'd had the power to terminate him, I would have."
Even now, Smith is under orders not to enter the assessor's offices at township hall.
Regardless of his role in the harassment claims and the Gumm lawsuit, Smith defends his job as an appointed part-time employee. He believes he has a solid track record of doing his job whenever called upon.
Vagueness of job
Smith, a Lombard resident, works without benefits for up to 600 hours per year at a salary of $18,000, the equivalent of about $30 per hour.
He was appointed to the post in 1999 because township officials thought, as a former township supervisor, he would know local laws, Smith said.
He's also secretary of the Illinois Republican Party and a longtime activist in the DuPage GOP.
Part of Sender's objection is that apparently no one keeps track of what Smith does.
For one, he doesn't write tickets to violators.
"We try to be informal," Smith said. "We don't want to give people fines. We just want to take care of the problem."
He also doesn't file reports of his township work.
Smith said because he can only work 600 hours a year, or roughly 2 1/2 hours a day, there's not enough time to write reports.
He does keep the message slips taken whenever someone calls the township with a problem that falls under his duties.
"That's basically my record as to what I've been doing," Smith said.
He couldn't say how many of those slips he receives in an average month.
"It depends on the time of year," he said.
During his recent reappointment, Smith held up a 2 1/2-inch thick, multicolored stack of phone message slips as evidence of his work. But the stack doesn't reflect all his work since 1999, he said, because he usually tosses a slip when the issue has been dead for six months or so.
Murphy admits the system for tracking Smith's time is flawed.
"I have no idea how to verify his hours," she said. "But how do you know when anyone is really working when they have a desk job?"
But she defends Smith, saying she hears him receive calls when he volunteers with her at DuPage County GOP headquarters.
"I hear him get calls all the time," she said. "I know he works."
Necessary job?
Addison, Wayne, York and Winfield townships all report they rely on county employees to solve the same problems Smith handles for Milton Township.
The county has six inspectors in its zoning and drainage departments. Plus, the sheriff's office has enforcement deputies with power to write tickets for things such as abandoned vehicles.
Residents in Milton Township pay an extra tax to help cover salaries for the deputies, but they remain under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office.
Murphy said that's where the cost savings come in.
"Ron's job cuts down on taking time away from our people who really need to be out on the roads," she said. "Do you want your patrolmen to take time knocking on people's doors to tell them when water is backing up out of the big pipes on the sides of the roads? I would rather see them spending their time on patrol."
Milton workers referred all questions about the sheriff's deputies to Township Supervisor Chris Heidorn, who defends Smith's job as a "citizen-friendly" method of enforcing township-specific codes.
Heidorn said having the sheriff's officers do Smith's job would be a waste of their enforcement duties, and county inspectors lack the knowledge of township codes to do the job.
As far as the quality of Smith's work, "if there were ever any question about Mr. Smith's performance, I'm certain the highway commissioner would have advised the board of his dissatisfaction," said Heidorn in an e-mailed statement. "Instead, we have received only the highest recommendations of Mr. Smith."
Mike Dutton, the current highway commissioner, submitted a letter in support of Smith, but declined to talk about Smith's township job.
"I'm going to be out of there in four months," Dutton said in January. "I don't want to get involved."
Township Trustee Ken McNatt defends Smith as someone who "does a pretty good job."
Sheriff's deputies didn't do as good a job enforcing the codes Smith deals with when it was their responsibility, McNatt said, adding it shouldn't matter how other townships handle such work.
"Why do we have to care what the other townships do?" he said.
Trustee James Flickinger echoed McNatt and Murphy's sentiments.
Despite Smith's supporters, Sender's objections remain. He still questions the amount of work Smith does and the scant proof of the hours he keeps.
In hindsight, Sender said he regrets not making a close examination of the 2 1/2-inch thick stack of phone messages to make sure they were genuine.
Sender, who has voted against Smith each year, believes his stance against Smith and support of Gumm resulted in Sender also not being slated for re-election by the GOP. But he doesn't regret either position.
"I voted against Ron Smith every time," Sender said. "He's a troublemaker."
The future
While Smith successfully won enough votes from the Milton Township board in December to keep his job for another year, he has promised to resign in April when a new highway township commissioner is appointed, he says, so he or she can put a new team in place.
The man who's all but certain to become Smith's new boss is fellow Milton Township Republican Precinct Committeeman Gary Muehlfelt, the party's nominee for highway commissioner.
Muehlfelt declined comment for this report while he grieves a recent death in the family.
Flickinger, Murphy and McNatt all backed Smith for reemployment in December.
"He just really wants to do a good job," Murphy said. "He's a hard worker, and he's honest. To me, his job is the kind of thing that saves the taxpayers money."
Monday
Watchdog: Firefighters make more than chief via overtime
Does overtime work pay too well? Some Wheaton firefighters even wind up taking home money more than chief does
February 04 2006
James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer
Wheaton firefighters are racking up so much overtime pay that a few of them earned more than the fire chief last year.
City records show that, for about half of the department's firefighters, overtime pay accounted for 20 percent to 40 percent of their entire yearly earnings.
Wheaton's city manager said it can actually cost local taxpayers more for Wheaton to hire additional firefighters than to pay the hefty overtime bill.
But city officials are investigating whether the overtime is leading to even longer work shifts for firefighters, and whether that could compromise their safety and effectiveness on the job.
Numbers show Wheaton taxpayers paid more last year for firefighters' overtime than for police overtime, even though the fire department is less than one-fourth the size of the police force.
In fact, seven fire department employees, most lieutenants, worked so much overtime in 2005 they brought home bigger paychecks than their boss, Wheaton Fire Chief Greg Berk.
How does an $80,000 salary turn into a $130,000 pay check? By the city trying to save some money.
It's actually cheaper for the city to allow fire staff to log a grand total of $669,000 in overtime than to hire more firefighters, City Manager Don Rose said.
The reason is firefighters and police personnel, by contract, move up the pay scale relatively quickly. Plus, the benefits both police and fire personnel receive cost the city a pretty penny.
Factoring in health, life and unemployment insurance; social security; pensions; uniforms; cleaning costs; training; workman's compensation and other benefits, and the total costs to the city of a first-year police officer is $95,000, Rose said.
Add in the cost of a new squad car and vehicle depreciation and it comes closer to $170,000. A first-year firefighter costs about $100,000.
Rose said the city learned its lesson about hiring more personnel to try and cut overtime costs a few years back.
In 2000, the fire department had 18 firefighters and overtime costs of $527,000. Three firefighters were hired the following year to try and cut that cost by an estimated $256,000.
"We didn't come anywhere close to meeting that mark," Rose said. "You hire new guys, all of sudden they've been here four or five years. They're getting three weeks vacation, training, they're gone for other reasons."
The city actually only saved $134,000 the first year the three firefighters were hired. By 2004, the fire department's overtime costs were back up to $534,000 - even more than it was before they hired the new staffers just three years before.
"Just hiring people doesn't necessarily reduce your overtime in that department because of the work schedules, time off and benefits they get in those positions," Rose said.
The work schedule of a firefighter - typically 24 hours on duty followed by 48 hours off -already results in them working more than the typical office worker in a calendar year.
Rank-and-file firefighters declined comment for this report and Berk, the chief, was out of town at a conference on Friday. But Rose said the fire staff doesn't mind the overtime.
In fact, there's a pecking order that essentially gives the most senior fire staffers the first shot at overtime. Overtime pay factors into pension benefits because the calculation uses highest total earnings in recent months. So working overtime pays a long-term benefit to Wheaton firefighters thinking about retiring soon.
So the question for the city in recent years has become, at what point does overtime translate into burnout?
Rose said the city developed an internal committee to investigate how many firefighters are needed to keep the city safe at any given time.
The committee also plans to look at how much overtime firefighters can work before they become a danger to themselves or others.
And to address possible staffing concerns, the coming budget likely will include additional ambulance services and probably some restructuring in the fire department's administration, he said.
Berk has asked for up to 12 more firefighters, depending on how the restructuring is done. Rose said 12 is a "truly unrealistic" number given the costs. Four new firefighters would be the minimum in Berk's request.
"It's up to the city council to set the priorities," Rose said. "If you want more people, you have to figure out how you're going to go about it."
GRAPHIC: Overtime costs add up at fire department
Several Wheaton Fire Department employees earned through 2005 overtime pay enough to surpass the salary of the fire chief.*
Top fire department earners:
1. Fire Lieutenant A: $130,924 (includes $50,526 in overtime)
2. Fire Lieutenant B: $129,691 ($50,619 in overtime)
3. Fire Lieutenant C: $126,861 ($47,789 in overtime)
4. Fire Lieutenant D: $126,783 ($48,083 in overtime)
5. Fire Lieutenant E: $124,673 ($46,641 in overtime)
6. Fire Lieutenant F: $124,186 ($45,114 in overtime)
7. Firefighter A: $97,557 ($30,908 in overtime)
8. Fire Chief Greg Berk: $95,615 (no overtime)
Source: City of Wheaton, which did not provide names of earners cited above, except for the fire chief.
*Overtime includes standard overtime wages plus "firefighter replacement pay." By the city's definition, such pay is given for overtime earned when a firefighter substitutes for a co-worker who is absent because of sick time, vacation time or other reasons.
GRAPHIC: Understaffed?
A look at staffing levels for the Wheaton police and fire departments.
Employees
- Police: 151 paid positions
- Fire: 37 paid positions
Overtime eligibility
- Police: 89 employees received overtime
- Fire: 33 employees received overtime
Non-overtime salary costs
- Police: $6,119,410
- Fire: $2,477,076
Total: $8,596,486
Overtime salary costs
- Police: $602,420
- Fire: $668,707
Total: $1.27 million
Total salary cost, including base pay and overtime
- $9.86 million
Source: City of Wheaton, based on 2005 earnings.
February 04 2006
James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer
Wheaton firefighters are racking up so much overtime pay that a few of them earned more than the fire chief last year.
City records show that, for about half of the department's firefighters, overtime pay accounted for 20 percent to 40 percent of their entire yearly earnings.
Wheaton's city manager said it can actually cost local taxpayers more for Wheaton to hire additional firefighters than to pay the hefty overtime bill.
But city officials are investigating whether the overtime is leading to even longer work shifts for firefighters, and whether that could compromise their safety and effectiveness on the job.
Numbers show Wheaton taxpayers paid more last year for firefighters' overtime than for police overtime, even though the fire department is less than one-fourth the size of the police force.
In fact, seven fire department employees, most lieutenants, worked so much overtime in 2005 they brought home bigger paychecks than their boss, Wheaton Fire Chief Greg Berk.
How does an $80,000 salary turn into a $130,000 pay check? By the city trying to save some money.
It's actually cheaper for the city to allow fire staff to log a grand total of $669,000 in overtime than to hire more firefighters, City Manager Don Rose said.
The reason is firefighters and police personnel, by contract, move up the pay scale relatively quickly. Plus, the benefits both police and fire personnel receive cost the city a pretty penny.
Factoring in health, life and unemployment insurance; social security; pensions; uniforms; cleaning costs; training; workman's compensation and other benefits, and the total costs to the city of a first-year police officer is $95,000, Rose said.
Add in the cost of a new squad car and vehicle depreciation and it comes closer to $170,000. A first-year firefighter costs about $100,000.
Rose said the city learned its lesson about hiring more personnel to try and cut overtime costs a few years back.
In 2000, the fire department had 18 firefighters and overtime costs of $527,000. Three firefighters were hired the following year to try and cut that cost by an estimated $256,000.
"We didn't come anywhere close to meeting that mark," Rose said. "You hire new guys, all of sudden they've been here four or five years. They're getting three weeks vacation, training, they're gone for other reasons."
The city actually only saved $134,000 the first year the three firefighters were hired. By 2004, the fire department's overtime costs were back up to $534,000 - even more than it was before they hired the new staffers just three years before.
"Just hiring people doesn't necessarily reduce your overtime in that department because of the work schedules, time off and benefits they get in those positions," Rose said.
The work schedule of a firefighter - typically 24 hours on duty followed by 48 hours off -already results in them working more than the typical office worker in a calendar year.
Rank-and-file firefighters declined comment for this report and Berk, the chief, was out of town at a conference on Friday. But Rose said the fire staff doesn't mind the overtime.
In fact, there's a pecking order that essentially gives the most senior fire staffers the first shot at overtime. Overtime pay factors into pension benefits because the calculation uses highest total earnings in recent months. So working overtime pays a long-term benefit to Wheaton firefighters thinking about retiring soon.
So the question for the city in recent years has become, at what point does overtime translate into burnout?
Rose said the city developed an internal committee to investigate how many firefighters are needed to keep the city safe at any given time.
The committee also plans to look at how much overtime firefighters can work before they become a danger to themselves or others.
And to address possible staffing concerns, the coming budget likely will include additional ambulance services and probably some restructuring in the fire department's administration, he said.
Berk has asked for up to 12 more firefighters, depending on how the restructuring is done. Rose said 12 is a "truly unrealistic" number given the costs. Four new firefighters would be the minimum in Berk's request.
"It's up to the city council to set the priorities," Rose said. "If you want more people, you have to figure out how you're going to go about it."
GRAPHIC: Overtime costs add up at fire department
Several Wheaton Fire Department employees earned through 2005 overtime pay enough to surpass the salary of the fire chief.*
Top fire department earners:
1. Fire Lieutenant A: $130,924 (includes $50,526 in overtime)
2. Fire Lieutenant B: $129,691 ($50,619 in overtime)
3. Fire Lieutenant C: $126,861 ($47,789 in overtime)
4. Fire Lieutenant D: $126,783 ($48,083 in overtime)
5. Fire Lieutenant E: $124,673 ($46,641 in overtime)
6. Fire Lieutenant F: $124,186 ($45,114 in overtime)
7. Firefighter A: $97,557 ($30,908 in overtime)
8. Fire Chief Greg Berk: $95,615 (no overtime)
Source: City of Wheaton, which did not provide names of earners cited above, except for the fire chief.
*Overtime includes standard overtime wages plus "firefighter replacement pay." By the city's definition, such pay is given for overtime earned when a firefighter substitutes for a co-worker who is absent because of sick time, vacation time or other reasons.
GRAPHIC: Understaffed?
A look at staffing levels for the Wheaton police and fire departments.
Employees
- Police: 151 paid positions
- Fire: 37 paid positions
Overtime eligibility
- Police: 89 employees received overtime
- Fire: 33 employees received overtime
Non-overtime salary costs
- Police: $6,119,410
- Fire: $2,477,076
Total: $8,596,486
Overtime salary costs
- Police: $602,420
- Fire: $668,707
Total: $1.27 million
Total salary cost, including base pay and overtime
- $9.86 million
Source: City of Wheaton, based on 2005 earnings.
Watchdog: Park District director's home more expensive than reported
Director’s home really cost $183,000 to fix
August 18, 2006
By: James Fuller
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Wheaton Park District officials say they never tried to intentionally mislead the public. They just didn’t do their homework.
Last week, the Daily Herald reported the district spent $80,000 to remodel the home it owns at Arrowhead Golf Course for its executive director, Rob Robinson, to live in.
Faced with evidence suggesting that figure was far below the actual cost, parks officials have now acknowledged the remodeling price tag so far is $183,000. The board shared the higher number at a meeting Wednesday night after seeing a document obtained by the Daily Herald showing the true costs.
District spokeswoman Mary Perotti supplied the original $80,000 figure in response to an inquiry about the remodeling costs. That figure was supported by Robinson and clarified by board President Paul Fullerton, who said $80,000 was the amount in this fiscal year’s budget for the project.
At the time, Perotti said that quantifying what was spent before this fiscal year was nearly impossible because the district had switched to new accounting methods.
But the day after the $80,000 price tag was reported, the Daily Herald obtained a spreadsheet that contained dated, line-item expenses for work on the director’s house, complete with the account numbers for the payments.
Perotti confirmed Thursday the spreadsheet is nearly identical to a report generated by the district staff for commissioners the day the Daily Herald’s original report was published.
The spreadsheet was generated at the request of commissioners, Perotti said in explaining she only learned after the spreadsheet came to her attention that the $80,000 wasn’t the full cost.
Fullerton said there was no intent to mislead the public.
“It would be insane for us to think we’re going to tell you it’s $80,000 when it’s $180,000 because, eventually, you’re going to find it out, anyway,” he said. “What happened is nobody went and looked at the numbers. Nobody was actually looking at a spreadsheet and adding all the numbers together.”
Fullerton said he knew the actual costs were higher than $80,000, but he, like Perotti and Robinson, had not personally gone back to add up the costs.
“I didn’t know it was twice as much, but the numbers are what they are,” Fullerton said. “If people think we spent too much, then people should come to the meetings and tell us we’re not being frugal.”
Commissioners explained the remodeling costs at the Wednesday meeting. They said they felt obligated to renovate the house fully to keep a promise to Robinson before he became the new director last November.
Commissioners pitched the job with a four-bedroom, rent- and mortgage-free house as an optional part of the compensation package. The prior director, Bob Dunsmuir, lived in the house for years until his retirement in late 2005.
“We led (Robinson) to believe it was in move-in condition, and it clearly was not,” Fullerton said at the meeting.
Robinson’s contract requires him to live in the district. Leaving his former job in Colorado meant taking a pay cut from nearly $200,000 to his current pay of $132,000.
“If the housing isn’t part of the park job, I needed to know because I wouldn’t have considered the position,” he said.
The park district would have increased Robinson’s salary if he had not opted for the free housing, as to allow him to live in Wheaton.
After the offer, commissioners learned the house had “astronomical” damage, including a leaky roof, rodents, a hornets nest in the ceiling, mold and other structural maladies. Thus, the repairs were necessary, commissioners said.
And, they’re nearly complete. What remains is some landscaping and the construction of a new two-car garage.
Regardless of the promise to Robinson, the park board had already decided to keep the house and possibly use it for public meetings or retreats.
August 18, 2006
By: James Fuller
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Wheaton Park District officials say they never tried to intentionally mislead the public. They just didn’t do their homework.
Last week, the Daily Herald reported the district spent $80,000 to remodel the home it owns at Arrowhead Golf Course for its executive director, Rob Robinson, to live in.
Faced with evidence suggesting that figure was far below the actual cost, parks officials have now acknowledged the remodeling price tag so far is $183,000. The board shared the higher number at a meeting Wednesday night after seeing a document obtained by the Daily Herald showing the true costs.
District spokeswoman Mary Perotti supplied the original $80,000 figure in response to an inquiry about the remodeling costs. That figure was supported by Robinson and clarified by board President Paul Fullerton, who said $80,000 was the amount in this fiscal year’s budget for the project.
At the time, Perotti said that quantifying what was spent before this fiscal year was nearly impossible because the district had switched to new accounting methods.
But the day after the $80,000 price tag was reported, the Daily Herald obtained a spreadsheet that contained dated, line-item expenses for work on the director’s house, complete with the account numbers for the payments.
Perotti confirmed Thursday the spreadsheet is nearly identical to a report generated by the district staff for commissioners the day the Daily Herald’s original report was published.
The spreadsheet was generated at the request of commissioners, Perotti said in explaining she only learned after the spreadsheet came to her attention that the $80,000 wasn’t the full cost.
Fullerton said there was no intent to mislead the public.
“It would be insane for us to think we’re going to tell you it’s $80,000 when it’s $180,000 because, eventually, you’re going to find it out, anyway,” he said. “What happened is nobody went and looked at the numbers. Nobody was actually looking at a spreadsheet and adding all the numbers together.”
Fullerton said he knew the actual costs were higher than $80,000, but he, like Perotti and Robinson, had not personally gone back to add up the costs.
“I didn’t know it was twice as much, but the numbers are what they are,” Fullerton said. “If people think we spent too much, then people should come to the meetings and tell us we’re not being frugal.”
Commissioners explained the remodeling costs at the Wednesday meeting. They said they felt obligated to renovate the house fully to keep a promise to Robinson before he became the new director last November.
Commissioners pitched the job with a four-bedroom, rent- and mortgage-free house as an optional part of the compensation package. The prior director, Bob Dunsmuir, lived in the house for years until his retirement in late 2005.
“We led (Robinson) to believe it was in move-in condition, and it clearly was not,” Fullerton said at the meeting.
Robinson’s contract requires him to live in the district. Leaving his former job in Colorado meant taking a pay cut from nearly $200,000 to his current pay of $132,000.
“If the housing isn’t part of the park job, I needed to know because I wouldn’t have considered the position,” he said.
The park district would have increased Robinson’s salary if he had not opted for the free housing, as to allow him to live in Wheaton.
After the offer, commissioners learned the house had “astronomical” damage, including a leaky roof, rodents, a hornets nest in the ceiling, mold and other structural maladies. Thus, the repairs were necessary, commissioners said.
And, they’re nearly complete. What remains is some landscaping and the construction of a new two-car garage.
Regardless of the promise to Robinson, the park board had already decided to keep the house and possibly use it for public meetings or retreats.
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