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Board dissolves Gainesville District Volunteer Fire and Rescue
The Prince William Board of County Supervisors has taken over the Gainesville District Volunteer Fire Department and has turned it over to the career staff, essentially firing Chief Richard Bird. During a special session on Jan. 16, the board heard the results of an audit that concluded the department is “dysfunctional” and mismanaged.Kevin McGee, the county's fire and rescue chief, will assume the management of the Gainesville department for the time being and both the Gainesville Station and the Antioch Station will be staffed exclusively with career staff transferred in from other stations. McGee said he and his staff will immediately begin working to reinstate volunteers who want to return to duty.
Robin Howard, the county auditor who investigated the fire department, said there are three possible outcomes from an audit: satisfactory, needs improvement or unsatisfactory. The Gainesville department was found to be unsatisfactory, he said, in part because they were uncooperative with the audit and did not respond to requests for information or for documents. More troubling, he said, was the condition of the department's financial records and overall management.
“Audit Services did not uncover any instances of fraud or malfeasance during the audit,” his report states. “However, financial and business information received was at times incomplete, unreliable and in overall such disarray that we concluded that if in fact fraud was perpetrated, it would be difficult and/or impossible to detect.”
The money is a complicated issue because each department gets a large part of its budget from taxpayer funds, which come from the county's fire levy that is added onto the real estate tax. The Gainesville District Volunteer Fire Department, which includes the Gainesville Station on John Marshall Highway and the Antioch Station on Antioch Road, had a fiscal year 2009 budget of $678,937 from the fire levy. However, each department can also raise its own additional money by hosting Bingo games or other fundraisers. Adding it all together, the Gainesville department had about $2.6 million for the two years beginning in 2006. County officials acknowledged that the financial records are unclear.
Asked later whether Bird is compensated for serving as chief, Howard and the supervisors could say only that he is not paid a salary by the county. But when pressed on whether Bird is receiving any compensation from the Gainesville department's funds, they said they didn't know. And that, they acknowledged, is part of the problem.
The Gainesville department is one of 12 fire and rescue departments in the county and according to Board Chairman Corey Stewart (R), the departments “are literally private companies.” The volunteers in each department elect their own chief and other officers, raise their own funds and manage their own affairs. Up until now, the county government has had little say in how the departments are run.
But each station is staffed by a combination of career personnel, who report to McGee, and volunteers, who report to the volunteer chief. The volunteer chief, in this case Bird, is responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of the station but he is supposed to answer to McGee as well.
That's part of the problem too, said McGee, who also weighed in on the issue. McGee said he has had “numerous” problems with the Gainesville department since he took over as the county's overall chief 16 months ago.
The problems with the station began with citizen complaints but have since escalated, he said, and none of the issues has been resolved. Bird has been uncooperative and uncommunicative, both with himself and with the Fire and Rescue Association, to whom he is also at least theoretically answerable, McGee said.
In addition, he cited a lack of training and certification among volunteers and said some are medically unfit for duty. There are also staffing voids and safety concerns at the station and the leadership has created a hostile work environment for volunteers.
Several former volunteers spoke out against Bird during the meeting, saying that they were suspended or expelled for unspecific charges after they questioned the way the station was being run or sought election to leadership positions.
County Executive Craig Gerhart said later that county officials aren't clear about what the men were charged with that led to their suspensions but he added that it is clear that the suspensions and lack of due process violated the department's own policies.
McGee said that “The kind of environment that was created in that station has caused many members to leave.”
He added that he has been working with Gainesville volunteer Earl Luhn, who will be a key player in reorganizing the department and in reaching out to volunteers who have left but who may want to rejoin.
Bird did not speak on on Friday but the Gainesville department's attorney, Robert Zelnick, addressed the board on the department's behalf.
Zelnick said the auditor's request for information and documents was made just before the Christmas holidays and that it did not include a deadline. He said he had informed Howard that the information would be made available after the first of the year and he noted that the documents needed to be collected and processed by volunteers working in their spare time.
He also said the auditor's report had not yet been delivered to Bird or to himself so he couldn't defend all of the charges in it. However, he acknowledged that there are problems at the Gainesville station and asked that Bird and the other station leaders be given time to address the board's concerns.
“The department is willing to take the necessary steps to improve the controls to work with the county,” he said. “It's certainly unfair based on one audit to not give them the opportunity to respond to the deficiencies that have been alleged.”
As for McGee's accusations, Zelnick said they came “completely out of left field.”
But for Gerhart and the supervisors, the combination of charges was too serious to be ignored.
Gerhart said after the meeting that the auditor had asked simple questions and requested standard documents. That the leadership was unwilling or unable to provide them was the first strike, he said, adding that “the financial operation was a mess.”
On top of that, he continued, the station has some long-standing issues with safety and that its own safety policies and procedures were “held in total disregard.”
Then there's the “breakdown in communications” between McGee and the station and McGee's assertion that he has “lost confidence in the leadership” in Gainesville.
“You put all of these things together and the conclusion I think, is it's not working,” Gerhart said.
The supervisors agreed. In fact, they called a special session on Jan. 16 to deal with the issue. The board had originally been set to take up the matter during their regularly-scheduled meeting on Jan. 13 but that meeting ran late and the issue had to be postponed. The problems at the Gainesville department were severe enough that they opted to hold a special meeting three days later, rather than wait until their next planned meeting on Feb. 3.
Gainesville Supervisor John Stirrup (R) said he has received citizen complaints and added it is clear that the department suffers from “chronic and systemic problems.”
He recommended that the board dissolve the department and turn its management and property over to the county, essentially handing it over to McGee. The rest of the supervisors unanimously agreed. All of the volunteers at the Gainesville and Antioch stations have been relieved of their duties until the reorganization can take place. In the meantime, career staff will handle both stations.
But it won't end there. The board also called for a review of the way the rest of the volunteer stations are managed, particularly when it comes to money and the board's oversight. Stewart said that since so much of the stations' funding comes from taxpayer dollars, the board needs some assurance that the money is being spent wisely.
“I can't look the citizens in the face and say their money is being spend wisely, efficiently and effectively,” he said.
The results of that report are due in May.
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