If two proposed ordinances before the Board of Alderman are adopted, the director of the Office of Emergency Management will get the same stipend as the city’s fire chief. And that has some people, like Mark Widomski, (pictured) upset.
Widomski was one of several people at a public hearing Tuesday night who spoke for and against the two proposed ordinances, which set pay stipends for the three members of the Office of Emergency Management and for the chief, assistant chiefs and other officers of the fire department.
The separate ordinances set the fire chief’s and OEM director’s stipends at $15,000 each.
“It’s a slap in the face to (the fire chief),” Widomski said of the equal pay rates, considering that the fire chief oversees more than 200 people, while the OEM director ruins a department of three.
Citizens United party chairman Chris Panek and White Hills Fire Co. No. 5 captain Tony DeSarli also spoke against the OEM stipends and other benefits such as cell phones and city cars.
“We, the members of the White Hills Company, object to the approval of this ordinance and feel that there should be no compensation for the deputy OEMs and no city assigned vehicles or cell phones issued to them,” DeSarli said. “Everyone knows we are in tough economic times and that the city of Shelton budget has been reduced in many areas of services across the board and that approving this additional $30,000 for positions that do not merit such compensation would be a waste of hard-earned taxpayers’ money.”
Panek also expressed concern at the process the Board of Alderman followed on the public hearing, saying it violated the charter by holding a hearing without sending the proposal to a subcommittee first.
He called for a legal opinion on the procedure, and asked the Board of Alderman to keep the public hearing open while they waited for a response.
“The big deal is that you are silencing the voice of the public by not giving them ample time to review an ordinance and obtain information,” Panek said.
But John Millo, the director of OEM, brushed off the complaints as personal attacks and said the objectors did not have all the information.
“When you’re the former fire chief and you ran a successful department, along the way you’re not always everybody’s friend when you’re the boss for 10 years,” Millo said after the hearing.
Millo said the director position has always been paid at a similar level, and that the ordinance simply “formalizes it, so nobody could come back to the city with a bill for their services.” He said half the pay stipends are covered by a federal Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security grant.
Responding to criticism about the amount of gas he uses in his city-issued car, Millo said much of it came from an official trip to Washington D.C. to attend the funeral of a Shelton resident and U.S. Army lieutenant who was killed in Iraq.
Fire Chief Francis Jones declined to weigh in on the proposed stipends for OEM workers, but said the city should embrace the department as part of the total emergency response team.
“The world we live in has changed since 9/11,” Jones said. “It’s important as a community that we have strong emergency services.”
Millo said the Office of Emergency Management was created as part of the national response to September 11, where the state was split into five emergency response regions. The director is the point person to the regional DEMHS director in the case of a serious local emergency, according to Millo.
The Board of Alderman closed both public hearings and will take up the issues at its next meeting.
