John Scarffe, Nederland. During a virtual meeting of the Nederland Fire Protection District Board of Directors at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 2, 2020, the Board discussed procedures to deal with a hostile workplace complaint and personnel vacation and sick day policies. Before the regular meeting, the Board discussed the pension fund during a work session starting at 6 p.m.

During new business, the Board discussed a complaint regarding hostile working conditions. On May 28,2020, the Board president of the Nederland Fire Protection District received a complaint regarding a hostile workplace, retaliation and violation of whistleblower statutes, insurance and pension fraud and lack of current employment manuals.

Board Chair Iain Irwin-Powell said, “The Board regards these accusations seriously and will discuss how to investigate them appropriately.” The complainant has filed the same with the County Attorney, and the Board is attempting to establish the status of that filing. As yet, the Board has not received any indication of that.

The complainant requested an independent investigator to handle the complaint and consequently the Board decided to engage an external investigation company to ensure a fair investigation, as a majority of the Board could be seen as not being impartial.

Irwin-Powell told the Board he is working with attorneys, but it is slow due to offices being closed with the COVID-19 virus. “We are bound to do an investigation due to the nature of this complaint, and it could be internal if investigators were impartial.” 

The Board’s advice is this is something they don’t want to get wrong, and Irwin-Powell strongly advised an external investigator. He talked to one on Monday, and it would cost between $5,000 to $10,000 to investigate.

Irwin-Powell suggested having a conversation with the company to set the scope of work, and from that they will get an estimate about how much it would cost and what they would need to do. An external investigation would help to regain trust with the membership.

There was also a complaint from the Chief regarding a conversation between the Chief and one of his staff. The Board had tabled an executive session over the matter but agreed to discuss it publicly in abstract. Irwin-Powell said he had a meeting with Fire Chief Rick Dirr regarding his position in the chain of command and confirmed to the department that the Chief is in command of day-to-day operations and should be treated with respect.

Irwin-Powell said the discussion doesn’t meet the requirement for an executive session for various reasons, but it has lifted the lid on something the Board really needs to look at and is a much bigger issue than just this. Board Member Patrick Richardson said that treating each other with a lack of respect would not be tolerated in any other organization and it will not be tolerated here. 

The complaint was created by an internal meeting that the Chief was unaware of, and Irwin-Powell would ask staff to keep the Chief informed moving forward. Dirr said he believes the intention was to mollify his concerns, and the Board has done that. 

Board Member Henry Zurbrugg said this may be more serious, and it’s going to require the Board to think about this and be clear about how we feel about this. Dirr said that when someone tells him that he can’t tell them what they are doing on their shift and is told it’s not his business, that’s not how business works. 

“We should be focusing on changing the culture, I would start with counseling and document conversations which are signed into files with corrective actions,” Richardson said.

During the Future Business agenda item, Irwin-Powell suggested the Board should have a discussion about way the disputes proceed, because the membership thinks they have nowhere to go with complaints. They should have a Human Resources component independent of anyone.

“It’s something we should be looking at,” he said. “We have a lot of discontent, and I don’t think the current system works properly.” 

The Board discussed vacation and sick leave policies. The Department carried a vacation and sick liability into this year of $88,559, for which the Department has $79,200 in reserve on the recommendations of the auditors. 

With the usual accruals of vacation up to the end of May, the Department has a floating liability of $113,531, which is not unusual for this time of year. “We have observed that we are carrying too much liability because the carryover policy has not been properly applied,” Irwin-Powell said. 

The Board discussed some options to start reducing that to a more reasonable amount fairly. Currently, vacation has accrued 2,353 hours and sick days of 1,808 hours between all staff. 

The Board discussed the difficulties of covering shifts in a small department and how the shift officers can do shift swaps instead of taking vacation or sick time, which are a couple of the reasons how this situation occurs, Irwin-Powell said. The Board discussed paying some of it out from the liability reserve and reducing it by requesting staff to take time off.

He told the Board, “We need to do something about this. We have fairly large numbers we should improve on, and a number of staff that have more vacation and sick days than allowed, so need to work out a plan.” 

A change in Colorado employment rules state that vacation and sick time is the same as compensation unless you have a policy in place to address that. It encourages staff to take vacation time, but sick time carries over. 

If an employee takes a vacation, someone has to cover the shift and that would fall on the chief for the rest of the year. Chief Dirr said that Rik Henrikson covers vacation shifts, and Irwin-Powell suggested talking to shift officers to see if they would cover vacation and sick time, and he is looking for ideas to keep this from getting worse. He requested that Board members and staff write down some ideas. 

During the Pension Fund work session at 6 p.m., the Board noted that the Pension Fund Board has a vacancy that will be decided in December and will invite the members and retirees of the department to apply. The pension fund was initiated about 22 years ago as a way to recognize volunteers who had put in between 10 and 20 years of service to the community. 

Unfortunately, like a lot of pension plans, it became unsustainable about 10 years ago and had to stop admitting new applicants, according to Irwin-Powell. The Department funds part of the plan with a specific mill levy of .5 mils, and the state makes a contribution. 

Currently, if a volunteer provides 10 years of service, they are eligible at age 50 or later to a pension of $200 per month and after 20 years $400 per month with a prorated amount for the intervening years. The plan is currently funded well enough to provide for its current retirees and members who have yet to retire, although it is market linked, and this year may change that outlook for a few years. The plan is managed by the Fire and Police Pension Association (FPPA).

The next meeting of the Nederland Fire Protection District will be on July 1, 2020.

(Originally published in the June 11, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)