Personnel Policy of Decatur, AL, Fire & Rescue Criticized by City Board

Oct. 26—Problems revealed during the appeals of two firefighters demoted at Decatur Fire & Rescue led to a stinging critique this week by the Personnel Board and a unanimous vote recommending changes in the department's personnel policies.

Personnel Board member Nora Vanderploeg said she wrote the recommendations to Mayor Tab Bowling and Fire Chief Tracy Thornton based on concerns about the hearings held in August and September. Curtis Butler and Kevin Jackson unsuccessfully appealed their demotions from lieutenant to firefighter.

The recommendation's preamble says the Fire Department "has shown relaxed and ineffective informal communication related to incidents that do not meet the expectations of the behaviors and performance of an employee's position."

It criticizes department leadership for not addressing issues in a timely manner. It says employees "did not feel confident behaviors would be addressed and did not see concerns raised appropriately to next-level leaders."

It says performance appraisals are inadequate, and that "more concerning behaviors which violated policy were not addressed formally."

Vanderploeg said the goal of the preamble was for the mayor and fire chief to "understand the context of our concerns."

Personnel Board attorney Richard Lehr said before Thursday's unanimous vote that he reviewed and approved the document. Board chairman Harold Gilmore was absent from the meeting.

Board member Suzie Wiley said it's important that the Fire Department include not only negative incidents but also recognitions and achievements in an employee's personnel file.

"You need to be able to go into anyone's file and see if there's been an issue or if they've done a great job, got an award," Wiley said. "It's not only for bad stuff, it's for good stuff too. I want to know if someone went over and above the call of duty, and they got recognized for it."

Vanderploeg said recognition is in the performance documents presented during the two appeal hearings, "but what was lacking was the verbal conversations."

Wiley agreed, saying those conversations "just stopped and didn't go up the (leadership) chains." She said they heard that employees and leadership "were afraid" to get involved in complaints.

Wiley said she thinks the recommendations are "great, and I hope they're followed."

Lehr said the Personnel Board recommendations only are effective if city leadership is willing to adopt and follow them.

Human Resources Director Richelle Sandlin told the Personnel Board that the city budgeted $19,000 to purchase a new online performance management program that features performance check-in options, a dashboard with metrics and employee reviews.

Bowling and Thornton said Thursday that they had not seen the recommendations, but both recognized during the appeal hearings the need for changes.

"I don't think anything you said is something we haven't discussed," Thornton told Vanderploeg after she summarized the recommendations. "It's something we know we need to do, and we've already started addressing."

Thornton said they recently hired Durbin Leadership, led by Dan Durbin, to conduct leadership training of department officials.

"We immediately started addressing these things that I hope are in your guidelines," Bowling said.

The recommendations include:

—Implementing formal documentation of policy violations or performance expectations.

—Creating a culture in which city leaders will address matters raised by an employee without retaliation.

—Ensuring human resource performance management training.

—Creating and following a formal investigation process in a partnership with Human Resources.

— [email protected] or 256-340-2432

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