Early this year, a dispute between Hiram Mayor Anne Haynam and former Hiram Fire Department Chief Bill Byers came to a head.
In February, the fire department issued a motion of no confidence against Haynam. Then in March, Byers retired, and the assistant chief and captain resigned. In April, the village hired an interim chief to take Byers’ place.
Byers said one of the reasons he retired as chief of the department was because Haynam’s expectations for fire department staff didn’t align with the responsibilities of a firefighter and inhibited their ability to respond to calls promptly.
“What really did it for me, what started it was, she told me, ‘your staff’s very immature, and they’re not trying to contribute to the village as a whole.’ I’m like, they work for the fire department of the village. They shouldn’t be out mowing the yard. They shouldn’t be out cleaning things, doing things. They are firefighters and EMTs,” Byers said.
“In public safety, you aren’t necessarily paid for what you do; you’re paid for what you’re prepared and ready to do, and she felt that they should be busy all the time, doing other people’s work, including myself.”
Haynam said she never required firefighters to mow a lawn, but she did require them to clean a hallway and the bathrooms of the council chambers.
“They sleep in council chambers,” Haynam said. “That’s a space that they have historically, well before my time, been responsible to clean: The hallway right outside of that and the men’s and women’s restroom stalls that are off of that hall. They’re public restrooms, but they’re also the restrooms that staff uses in the evenings. We’re not talking about major cleaning duties. This is how I feel about it: Everyone has a job to do to help make the village better, and that’s a small way that we ask them to chip in to help out. The nature of their job is, literally, they’re at the station waiting for a call, so to take a little bit of time and help out, I think it’s great, and I think it’s part of being a team for the village.”
Haynam said the Hiram Fire Department has also had insufficient staffing for at least five years, as well as an inadequate method for keeping track of employees' time on the job. In January, Haynam instructed the department to change to timesheets for logging on to a shift.
“It’s a concern to me when we have days where we don’t have anybody there. It’s a concern to me when we just have one person there. That’s the charge for our new chief, to bring in new people and improve coverage,” Haynam said. “Up until January of this year, they were writing in a log book, the hours or their total: one of the two. Then, the assistant chief was taking that and entering it into a computer program, so we didn’t have distinct timesheets for each employee. Now, each employee has their own timesheet, they sign off on it, and that’s a legal document. They’re owed that money: no more, no less. That type of documentation is not only required by our handbook, but the state auditor’s office requires this type of logging, and so once we started requiring that, there was a little bit of pushback.”
Byers contested the use of the timesheets and said Haynam began questioning how he was paying people to train.
“We did electronic payroll and she insisted we go back to timesheets on paper, and we’ve never done it that way. In all my time, it was always fine. The auditors were always fine with it. The fiscal officers were fine with it. And she decided, ‘Hey, I have to change this. I want paper timesheets with signatures.’ I said we’ll print electronic timesheets and we’ll have them sign them. She said, ’No, we need them filled out,’” Byers said.
The fire department issued a motion of no confidence against Haynam on Feb. 23, citing a contract violation due in part to changes made to the department by Haynam, and Byers retired on March 2, after 21 years with the department.
As a result of Byers’ retirement and other fire department employee resignations, Haynam said the village was forced to briefly shut down the department.
“Our chief, assistant chief and captain all resigned, leaving a leadership void,” Haynam said. “We closed for 33 hours as we needed to verify our lieutenant's credentials, assure liability coverage, and the medical director from UH had written ‘pulling coverage.’ During that time, we had coverage from Community EMS and G-F-N Fire. No 911 call went unanswered.”
Haynam released a statement on April 13 to announce Tony Marotta as the new interim fire chief for the Hiram Fire Department. Haynam said Marotta will act as chief for an interim period to see if he’s a good fit for the community and may become the department’s permanent chief at a later date.
Interim Fire Chief Tony Marotta. Jeremy Brown/The Portager
Marotta has 30 years of experience working as a paramedic and a firefighter and is currently a lieutenant with the Aurora Fire Department. He will keep that position as he takes over as interim chief of the Hiram Fire Department. He’s already making changes at the department.
“There's payroll built into our system that’s not even being used,” Marotta said. “It’s not even configured. I’m going to set it up. The system that we use for scheduling can also produce a timesheet. We can utilize it for our timesheets: exactly what the mayor wants. When I talked to the fiscal officer, they said, ‘Well, we asked the fire department and they said there’s no way they can do that.’ I said, ‘You’re already paying for the system; you’re just not utilizing it.’ So, one of the biggest gripes that they had was the paper timesheets."
Marotta will be on site at Hiram’s Spring Fest on April 26, with a fire truck and a medic squad to greet the community and interact with children.
Hiram Township versus Hiram Village
The changes at the fire department are affecting more than just the village, however. Hiram Township Chair Jack Groselle is also at odds with Haynam.
“A good fire chief quit because of her,” Groselle said. “He [ex-Mayor Lou Bertrand] tried to work with the fire department to make them better, instead of working against their department, trying to make them worse. She wants to be involved in everything with the fire department. She wants to be in control of everything: the finances, their operations, their personnel. She wants to be totally in control of the whole thing. That’s not how the Hiram Fire Department has worked. Hiram Fire Department has worked on the fact that you had a bunch of good people, many of them from Hiram, from the village and township, that worked for less pay, with camaraderie and giving back to the community, and she’s pulling the rug right out from underneath them.”
Groselle said Haynam isn’t following the contract that the village has with the township regarding the fire department. As a result, the township has sent the village a 120-day notice that includes a request for the mayor to dissolve her relationship with the fire department, and if the conditions of the township's requests aren’t met, the township will start its own fire department using three bays of the township garage. Groselle said the Hiram Fire Department equipment would be split 50/50 if that were to happen.
“It’s in the contract that we have to give them 90 days; we're giving them 120 days,” Groselle said. “We have things that we want them to agree to, the major one being abiding by the contract. The biggest thing is, she can’t be a part of it [the fire department]. ... We’ll have our own fire department, that’s not a problem. We’re ready to go.”
In response to the township's notice, Haynam proposed a joint fire department with nearby departments.
“Right now, they have put a proposal in to keep it in the same place and just change the governance structure, so there would be, instead of it being a village-run entity, we’re talking about it being a joint district,” Haynam said. “We have proposed inviting Troy, Parkman and some others into the district, so these are all things that are on the table right now.”
Groselle said the township isn’t going to be part of a joint district, because Hiram College isn’t paying its fair share.
“She wants to do a joint district. I saw the proposal today,” Groselle said. “Here’s what happens with a joint district: The township gets screwed, the village college pays nothing, because there’s no income tax that comes from the college. So, if I’m in the village, I would be going to the college going, hey, you have to put this much money through, or you’re not going to get coverage, and right away they'd start putting on $50 a kid per semester to cover the EMS and fire, which would be about $80,000 that the college would have to pay. Bingo. That would add a lot to the fire department and a lot from the village. The village can’t get their act together. We’re not doing a joint district, because the college goes for free. That’s ridiculous.”