Dissension In The Stephentown Fire Dept.

by David Flint
Jamieson Pelletier’s expulsion from the Stephentown Volunteer Fire Department this past March is still a source of major dissension in the ranks. The sticking point for many seems to be that the membership still does not know for sure why he was expelled. They also believe that, just as in a recent episode with the Stephentown Zoning Board, due process and governing regulations – in this case, the SVFD Bylaws – were not followed.
Following a meeting he had with the Board of Directors, Pelletier received a letter dated March 10 in which Bob Adler, President of the Department, and Doug Griswold, Chairperson of the Board of Directors, informed him that the Board of Directors had voted to expel him. No reason for the expulsion was stated. A follow-up letter in April, after Pelletier asked the Board to reconsider, indicated that “the consensus of the majority was to uphold the first decision to expel you on the grounds of insubordination.”
Pelletier believes the decision was related to two incidents. In November he had a confrontation with the Assistant Chief EMS at a training session in Berlin. Then in March he was in the driver seat of a fire truck about to depart the station to respond to a structure fire when the Fire Captain arrived and demanded that he get out of the truck and that he, the Captain would drive the truck. Pelletier seeing that the Captain did not have his gear, and advised by Earl Buffa in the passenger seat, drove the truck out anyway.
Pelletier claims he was not suspended by the Fire Chief for either incident and no charges were ever written up. He said that after the incident in November he agreed with Fire Chief Rich Burgess to stand down for the month of December but he was not officially suspended. He said he went to a Fire District Commissioners’ meeting in January to complain about harassment but was told to take it to the Board of Directors. He went to their meeting in March and told his version of the incident with the Fire Captain. The next day he received the letter saying he was expelled. Pelletier said he has consulted a lawyer on this but has no intention of taking any legal action.
Past Fire Chief David Corlew said it has never been clearly defined by the Department or the Board of Directors why Pelletier was expelled. He believes the Bylaws were not followed. The Bylaws specify that a member who has been suspended may seek a hearing before the Board of Directors and prior to the meeting the member is to be furnished with a written copy of the charges against him. The Board, with the recommendation of the Fire Chief, can uphold or overturn the suspension, or they can fine or expel the member. But there is no evidence that Pelletier was actually suspended, and, as far as Corlew knows, the charges against him have never been laid out.
Corlew expressed exasperation that at a time when the Department is sorely in need of volunteers, the leadership, instead of trying to work with a member, has just washed its hands and shut the book on it. Corlew said Pelletier may have been insubordinate but he has heard reports that the Board was also considering some incidents that happened 19 years ago. Corlew said Pelletier made a mistake in confronting the Assistant Chief EMS in the November incident. Regarding the second incident, however, he said he, too, if ready to roll in responding to a structure fire, would have ignored the order to get out of the truck from a superior officer who was not ready to go. “I fully back him on that,” Corlew said. That incident, he said, was blown out of proportion.
Corlew said Pelletier was absolutely a good fireman who responded to over 100 calls a year. He is missed, he said, especially at a time when it is often hard to get an ambulance off the floor. There were a few, he said, who did not like him and pushed to get him out. Corlew believes that because of the Board’s actions in this matter there are some who do not respond as readily to calls now, thus possibly putting the townspeople in jeopardy. “If this can happen to him, it can happen to anyone,” Corlew said.
Past EMS Assistant Chief Tammy Madden said that insubordination is not acceptable but neither is ignoring the Bylaws. If there were grounds for suspension or expulsion, due process should have been followed. As far as she could see, Pelletier was never officially suspended, the charges against him were never written up and the membership was never informed as to why he had been expelled. The Board, she said, could not vote on expulsion if the Fire Chief has not suspended the person. Madden said she brought it up at a Fire meeting in May, seeking to ask the membership for a vote on asking the Board of Directors to reconsider, but she was ruled out of order.
Madden noted that Pelletier was offered the opportunity to resign instead of being expelled, but she questioned why he should be required to make that choice without due process being followed.
Madden recalled that Pelletier, when he was Assistant Fire Chief, was enthusiastic and very safety conscious, “everything you would want an Assistant Chief to be.” She realized that he and current Assistant Chief EMS Rik McClave never got along. “They were like oil and water,” she said, “but we are all tossed in the same salad. We have to work together. We can’t be fighting.” This needless dissension, she believes, would discourage new volunteers. She mentioned that having recently worked on a retention and recruitment task force organized by Rensselaer County Executive Kathy Jimino, she was now discouraged that her own Department could set no better example than this.
How the Board could now “fix the mess they’re in,” Madden wasn’t sure. “If they could somehow go back and do everything right, I’d be happy,” she said. In her opinion, the Board should have thought through more thoroughly the consequences of their decision. Madden believes that regardless of the due process problem, expulsion was too harsh a punishment. “You have to be flexible with volunteers,” she said. “It’s not like you have 100 people standing in line to replace someone.”
Past Department President Barbara Danylak, who has also served as EMS Captain, said she did not know why Pelletier was expelled. She believed that a few people in the Department had been making his life miserable for years. She agreed that the Bylaws apparently were not followed, and she also did not believe that Pelletier was ever actually suspended before the expulsion took place. The charges, she said, should have been laid out before the Department and they should have been provided to Pelletier to give the 19-year member an opportunity to defend himself. Danylak said she had written a letter in his support to the Board of Directors but received no acknowledgement. She has heard that Department officers and the Board of Directors have been advised not to speak about the matter because it is in the hands of the lawyers, but, she said, no one seems to know who the Fire Department lawyer is.
Earl Buffa is a fireman and an elected Fire District Commissioner. He also feels it is not clear why Pelletier has been expelled. What he has heard seems to him to be petty. Regarding the confrontation in March with the Fire Captain, Buffa defended Pelletier. The Captain, he said, acknowledged that he did not have his gear with him and wasn’t ready to go.”I told Jamie, ‘Close the door and let’s go’,” he said. Later, Buffa told the Captain that he thought his behavior had been inappropriate. He also called the Fire Chief and discussed the incident. It riles Buffa that if the Board of Directors is basing their decision to expel at least partially on this incident, they never asked him to recount what he observed.  Instead he believes they went on pure hearsay.
Buffa said that to his knowledge no charges against Pelletier have been written up. Members brought the expulsion up at Department meetings, but the leadership didn’t want to discuss it. Since Pelletier was not officially suspended following the incident in November, nor was he suspended for the incident in March, Buffa does not understand how the Board of Directors could be following the Bylaws in expelling him.
He thinks that a small group has had a vendetta against Pelletier for a long time. Pelletier, he said, may have in the past been “a hot-headed kid,” but he did not believe he was like that now. He sees him as a fireman with two or three letters of commendation to his credit, one who responded to over 100 calls a year, “a stand up guy, a valuable asset to the community as well as the Fire Department – and he doesn’t deserve this.”
Buffa said he has not heard that the matter is in the hand of the lawyers and that the Department’s lawyer is one retained by the Fire District Commissioners. Buffa is a Commissioner and knows nothing of this, nor does he know who the District’s lawyer might be. As a Commissioner, he said he would like to know who is paying for it.
Buffa does not know what can now be done about this matter, but he feels that it has affected morale greatly. It won’t help with recruitment and retention, he said.
In an attempt to get the Department’s side and that of the Board of Directors on this unfortunate story, Doug Griswold, Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Fire Chief Rich Burgess and Bob Adler, President of the Fire Department, were all contacted. All three said they have been told that the advice of legal counsel is that they refrain from saying anything on the matter.
Gaston Robert, past Fire Chief in New Lebanon and an objective observer, when asked to comment on the Stephentown situation wrote, “I urge all parties to come to the table. There is nothing good that is going to come of this. I have had to deal with the same issues when I was Chief, and I can tell you that there will be no winners. Only the fire company and the townspeople will suffer from the less membership it creates. Get together and make it work. Then make good rules and make sure everybody knows them and follows them. The company is a team effort. Don’t forget it!”