Several citizens appeared the Boyd Forum held at the beginning of the Pensacola City Council on Thursday, May 12. Many wore red bands on their arms in support of Fire Chief Matt Schmitt and Deputy Fire Chief Joe Glover, who fired Mayor Ashton Hayward earlier in the week.
Several speakers expressed disappointment that Mayor Hayward and City Administrator were absent from the public forum. All council members were present, except Larry Johnson, who arrived around 6 p.m.
The time allotted for Boyd Forum was 30 minutes. Speakers were limited to three minutes each. Because of the large number of people wanting to speak, the council voted to extend the forum so that all could be heard. The forum was the first opportunity for citizens to voice their thoughts about the terminations.
Mayor Hayward discontinued public town hall meetings in December 2013. He did not hold a press conference about the investigative report or his decision. He simply published the report on the cityâs website.
Administrator Olson walked into council chambers when the Boyd Forum ended.
The citizens who spoke questioned the independence of the investigation and the mayorâs leadership.
Here is a transcript of the speakers at the Boyd Forum:
Mr. Ellison Bennett: Okay, thank you, sir. As you know, this has been going on nearly a hundred days, and I’m graced by the presence of our national board member, the Reverend Dr. H.K. Matthews, president of the National Movement for Civil and Human Rights. Also, our board member Thelma Roby is here tonight.
I was deeply concerned about the number of telephone calls and the way this investigation was handled. My question is, if the firm that did the investigation had a personal relationship with the mayor, why wasn’t some other firm asked to do the investigation outside of the city limits of Pensacola? My question, as I rise before you tonight, is about the hiring practices, promotions, bids, as to sending a bid out to a law firm to do an investigation, and the institutionalized racism that continues, continues after 40 years at the Fire Department here in the city of Pensacola.
I’m a Vietnam veteran. I put my life on the line for my country and my city, and I’m ashamed when I get a call that two black cadets had to sit in the garage on their dinner break while all the white firefighters ate up in the conference room. When Chief Glover spoke out about this, he get reprimand? What are we doing? What kind of message are we sending out to young people who all only want to be treated in a fair manner? I am disappointed at the outcome of this investigation, and as a member of the National Board for Civil and Human Rights, I can truly say that it’s round one. This is not over. Thank you.
Patricia Shaw: I was disappointed that Mr. Hayward is not here, that I wanted to speak about my son. The things that I read, that 139-page report, and I talked to my son recently about it and he said, “Well, Mama, everything on there is not a lie.” I said, “But son, when you take certain things and you twist and turn it, what does it turn to? It’s turns to non-truth.”
The things on there is not of character of my son, and I’m speaking for my family and friends and anybody that knows my son. They picked the right one, because you will not find anything spotted in his record. You’re trying to kill his character and his good name, and you won’t do it, and I’m just very disappointed in the city and how this has been conducted.
I’m just so surprised at how far this has gone, although in my intuition I felt like a firing of these two gentlemen was coming. I felt like [inaudible 00:03:53] coming in my heart because you had to do something because it was so long of an … First, it wasn’t an investigation. Then it wasn’t a penalty. So what? You think the people in the city are stupid?
Everybody can see through that 138 or 39-page report that there’s a lot of bogus stuff in there, such as they left out the fact about the luxury car that was leased. They left it out that my son had a free upgrade. Why did they leave that out? That’s just an example of some of the things that was in there that’s so silly to me.
A man that’s been in there for 27 years, and Mr. Schmitt more than 30 years, they don’t even know these men. They’re not … I know you don’t know my son, because there’s none of that is of character for him. He’s a good man. He’s always been, and he’s been brought up and taught to do the right thing. I know how serious he took his job and how honest he has been about it. It’s just an unjust thing that you’ve done, and it’s caused my family a lot of grief and pain behind this.
I just pray that the people responsible for it, the mayor and Sisson and whoever else is responsible there, I pray that you look, take a long look in the mirror, and look at this for what it really is, and fix it, because it’s wrong. It’s so wrong, and I’m just so disappointed in the city for letting this go on this far. It’s silly. Thank you.
Jerry McIntosh: I was hoping the mayor was here also, along with the HR person so we could address them directly, but since they were too cowardly to show up tonight, you know we’re going to address it anyway, and we will be addressing it in the future. The mayor came out, talking about he had … that the Fire Chief had bad judgment. He talked about poor leadership. He talked about a loss of confidence. Well, I had no confidence in the mayor from the day he was elected.
Poor leadership, he has shown that by locking people out of here, where certain people can’t go up to certain floors in a supposedly democratic elected position, that the people’s house, that he got locked out. You can’t go to certain areas here. So when he go to talking about leadership, he must have forgotten that the black Fire Chief paid his dues in this community along with the man that was supporting him, Mr. Max Smith.
The mayor, Mayor Hayward, is such a hypocrite in his statements, and his poor lack of judgment, and his poor leadership, and along with the Human Resource, Mr. Olson. It reminds me of the Dred Scott decision. We really need to address these issues properly. The issue has not been addressed. He used his friend’s law firm to do the investigation. Something is wrong with that. Something is wrong with a leadership that don’t respect the rank and file of this people.
If there was a problem, then the mayor should have sit down with … the mayor or whomever should have sit down with the two chiefs and then talked to them about whatever needed to be straightened out, and so they didn’t do that. Now we got a situation and it’s not going away, and we are not going to go away any time soon. The mayor can hide all he want to, but we’ll be back.
Marilyn Brown: Good evening, everyone. Since the mayor is not here, I’m going to be addressing an empty chair, kind of like Clint Eastwood on … Ashton Hayward, you fired the wrong two people, and everyone knows it. You hired your own personal hit man and personal criminal defense attorney to carry out this public lynching of Chief Schmitt and Chief Glover. You have spent 98 days and squandered thousands of tax dollars on a witch-hunt over allegations that everyone can see are utterly ridiculous. A free rental car upgrade? Are you kidding?
If anything, Russell Van Sickle’s investigation strengthened the case to bring these two men back as the leaders of the Fire Department. This so-called investigation clearly shows that Olson and Sisson should be fired, as they haven’t done their jobs according to the rules you used to terminate the Fire Chiefs since they’ve been here. The city’s Human Resource department is atrocious.
I’ll call it your investigation, Ashton Hayward, because that’s where it started and ended. You had one goal in mind from the start: to do whatever it took to get something on Chief Glover and Chief Schmitt. This whole conspiracy was a one-sided, partial, subjective and biased process. But guess what? You still failed to find anything of substance, and everybody sees it.
Ashton, you lied by saying that you weren’t involved in this fiasco because your friend, Edward Dees, admitted it in his inquiry that you were communicating with him about it from the beginning.
What kind of deal did you make with Edward Dees? How is he able to just ease up to your office and discuss your devious scheme? It seems like he has more access to the seventh floor than the city council members. Is every city employee on a first-name basis with you? Do they all refer to you as Ashton? Do you call all city employees back at night, or just Edward Dees? What does Dees get in exchange for delivering the goods on his superiors?
Ashton, we know this is the opportunity that you’ve been waiting for. Chief Glover has had to work his entire career under racist administrations, and you have continued that legacy. That’s obviously why you’ve kept Rusty Wells around. We are not fooled by you using a black man to bring down another black man. Edward Dees is too naïve and foolish to realize that all you’ve done is use him. Chief Glover, on the other hand, was a problem because he was responsible for too many African-Americans being hired as firefighters, and that had to cease.
Ashton Hayward, now we know why you made this despicable decision, because you couldn’t allow someone who was doing your bidding to be demoted or terminated. You can’t fire Olson, Sisson, Wells, or Bowling because they were doing exactly what you wanted them to do. By the way, there will be evidence of collusion presented which will implicate your attorneyâ¦and others. Don’t bother trying to cover up any more tracks, because the train has already left the station.
Ms. Wesley: You know, when I moved to Pensacola, I thought I’d come into a white town, but this racial profiling got to stop. I dealt with it at Whiting Field, and I’m dealing with it in here now. These two men have served their country, they have served their city, and Ashton Hayward, he needs to go somewhere and hide, where he is now, due to the fact is, Ashton Hayward do not do what he is supposed to be as a mayor.
I faxed him a letter because I needed some help. Instead of him picking up the phone and calling me direct, he was too much of a coward. His tail tucked between his legs, he got his secretary to call me. I didn’t write his secretary. I wrote him. I feel that if anybody needs to be moved, he needs to be exonerated from the city of Pensacola.
Ms. Stephanie Mitchell: Thank you. I’m going to read excerpts from Rick Outzen’s blog dated May 11, 2016. Rick Outzen speaking: “I asked Deputy Chief Glover why the fire department never had written hiring procedures. He said he wasn’t sure, but it probably was a throwback to the days when the fire chiefs refused to hire African-Americans and City Hall let them get away with it. In March, John Newton, the city’s first black firefighter, spoke at Pensacola City Council about his fight to get hired:
‘I’m going to give you a history lesson. In 1969, a man came up and asked me why would I take the test for the fire department, because he said the personnel manager said poor blacks take the tests, or that those that took the test couldn’t pass. I said, “Okay, I’ll take the test.” I’ll go have a good job, and I said I’ll do this. I took the test and came out number one to the list. Didn’t think any more about it until I found out that 12 people without any call to me for an interview was against the Civil Service regulations.
A friend of my father’s, Chappie James, was in town and heard about it. He said some lawyers in Atlanta contacted me, and then we gave the city notice that we were going to file a suit against the city, and the Fire Chief called me and asked me if I could come down for an interview. He said that he had promised the opening to somebody else and he would give me the next opening. I said fine, you’re the chief.
The next day a man from the highway patrol came and offered me a job. Said, “The fire chief told me to come and see you.” They didn’t want any blacks on the fire department then. Chappie James said, “The lawyers would be there. I’m paying for the attorney.” The next day the chief called me and said, “When do you want to come to work?”
I spent 10 years at the station where I slept. I was the only one sleeping in that bed. I didn’t have to take the linen off the bed at the end of each watch because nobody was sleeping in my bed.
I tell you, one time I came to work and saw the beds were out on the hose rack. I asked what was wrong. They said they had bed bugs. I said, “Well, why did you all put the beds out there?” “Yours didn’t have any bed bugs.” After that everybody wanted to sleep in my bed.
Rusty Wells was the city attorney at the time, and when I got hurt on the job I was into inspections. I had a chief say don’t worry. In a private meeting, I was in the next room. I heard him say, “it won’t be long here. We never had … ” and I’ll say “blacks,” but that was not the word he used. “We never had any blacks in a white shirt in this department. As long as I’m the chief we won’t have one.”
I told a friend of mine, John Lewis Allbritton, an attorney, about it. We had a meeting with Rusty Wells and the city attorney, and the city manager … ‘”
President Charles Bare: Thank you, Ms. Mitchell.
Ms. Mitchell: Thank you.
Kathleen McBride: It’s time for our City Council to be the leaders that you promised us when all of you, all of you, were running for office and campaigning for these jobs.
The mayor has made an absolute mockery of our City Hall, and I’m really disappointed that he’s not here, or Eric Olson, to listen to what we have to say. We as citizens were promised that we would have a system of checks and balances, and that the new charter would not give rise to corruption and abuse of power.
You can read for yourself the result of this three-month witch-hunt into the careers of two of our city’s finest employees by the extremely unobjective law firm which is none other than the mayor’s own criminal defense law firm, one that he has received countless campaign contribution from, and to whom he has funneled hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars through no-bid contracts. Our dollars. We’re the taxpayers.
The only smoking gun contained in the report into the fire chiefs is against Ed Sisson and Eric Olson. Those are the two city employees who should have been fired. It shows that the city has a sorry excuse of a Human Resource department head, Sisson, who, by the way, you as a Council have never confirmed because the mayor changes the title to avoid the Council’s review of the employee’s backgrounds and qualifications.
The investigative report shows that Human Resource has no written protocol for the hiring of Fire Department employees, and that Sisson provided no guidance, no written policy, and filed a complaint against the Fire Chiefs for what? Not having mental telepathy? Not being a mindreader as to what the unwritten protocols could be?
At no time was any employee’s performance review conducted. At no time was any counseling given, no opportunity for the chiefs to know that Sisson was displeased with how they managed the Fire Department, and no opportunity for them to correct anything that didn’t meet with the mayor’s approval.
Sisson’s complaint was Schmitt and Glover intentionally and deceptively deviated from the hiring protocol for the recent firefighter hiring round in late January 2016. The evidence found in the report and in the Human Resource manual proved that the hiring protocols for the firefighters are not written.
Dianne Krumel: Empty chair mayor. Empty chair mayor. This quote belongs to you, Ashton Hayward. This is your own quote, referring to Fire Chiefs Schmitt and Glover: “You have lost confidence in your ability to lead the Fire Department.”
Are you kidding me? There are many of us here tonight that have lost confidence in your ability to lead our city.
I want to refresh your memory on what I said at the last meeting. Every Council meeting begins with a Pledge of Allegiance, saying “with liberty and justice for all.” As a result of the selected published quotes in the Pensacola News Journal attempting to portray Fire Chiefs Schmitt and Glover as the guilty party, the Pledge of Allegiance at City Hall should be changed to say “with liberty and justice for some.”
You and this administration have withheld facts from the public for more than three months by use of gag orders and intimidation. All the while, you and your henchmen have concocted a disastrous scheme to terminate the chiefs because they filed an EEOC complaint against the city. The facts show that Glover was not paid the same salary as others in his position due to the color of his skin. I call it systemic racism in the Fire Department.
There’s so much colluding, conspiring and outright lies that you can’t keep up with who was saying what to who. You simply make up the rules to fit your needs for the moment, and try to use it against the firemen even though there’s nothing in writing to support your claims that they should be fired because they didn’t follow the rules that never existed.
You, the strong-armed mayor missing here tonight, hid behind Olson and Sisson and others to protect you and do your dirty work, but now all of you are caught up in your own tangled web of lies, deceit, and cover-ups. It’s just like a crazy whodunit movie when you can’t figure it out until the end. Well, the end is near and the truth will come out.
Sisson and Olson should be fired. It’s only fair, since you terminated the Fire Chiefs for not following the rules based on the results of this witch-hunt investigation. Oops, oops, I forgot. Session and Olson, they don’t have to follow the rules. They just make them or change them to suit the needs of the mayor.
Ashton, I’m sure you’re wondering what we’re going to do about this. Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore. Since you refuse to get rid of Sisson and Olson, we are going to get rid of you. If there’s one thing that I know how to do, that’s organize people, and I’ve got others who are willing to do the same. If you think there’s not enough people in Pensacola ready to recall you, you better think again, missing chair Ashton.
The time is now for the strong arm of the citizens of Pensacola to unite, hence these red armbands. Just in case you haven’t noticed them, Mayor, they are a signal to you that we’ve had enough, enough of you, Olson, Sisson, Deas and others who are so wrapped up in this investigation you have no way out.
Truth is on our side. It will no doubt take a lawsuit for the real facts to come out, but the citizens of Pensacola will know, and you will be finished. Rumor has it there’s a recall of the mayor in the works. Let’s seal that recall with your own words, Ashton: “loss of confidence to lead.”
Mr. Maurice Moody: Good evening. When I heard that Hayward had fired the Chief and the Deputy Chief, I said to myself, “Man, what did they do? Was someone sleeping with someone’s wife? Were they constantly engaging in fisticuffs with their subordinates? Did their decision lead to the loss of life to a fellow firefighter?”
No. None of those things occurred. I read the report, and I had to laugh. The notion that these fine public servants were terminated based on this one-sided, subjective report defies all belief.
Ashton, this is another black eye to the city. Ashton, this is an embarrassment, and it really illuminates your incompetence and lack of leadership qualities. The fact that you did not have the decency to meet with these men personally regarding your decision says something else about you as well. The situation involving Eric Olson and Melanie Nichols is far worse than what I see in this report, far worse.
You know what? Council, you already got people effectively deconstructing what is in this report, and they’re just mere talk show hosts and reporters. Think about what a competent attorney is going to do. Congratulations, Ashton. You have opened the city to another costly lawsuit a la the Fish House.
I don’t have the mayor’s stature. I don’t have the prestige of the mayor’s office behind me. Council, I’m just a old country boy from Mississippi, but I am intelligent enough to know that nothing in this report comes anywhere close to a firing offense, nothing.
I’m going to leave you with the words of Pensacola’s first African-American fireman, Mr. John Newton, Mr. John Newton, a hero who two months ago came before this Council in support of Schmitt and Glover.
He said, “It’s not what you say. It’s what the judge says,” and I agree with that.
Let me finally say this to the Council. Personally, I know that there are some good people up there, all of you up here, I would imagine, but it seems to me that you have been feckless during this whole fiasco. I encourage you to get a backbone and make the right vote in June.
Thelma Roby: Good afternoon. I am appalled that I have to stand here before you, Council, to talk about what we should be doing for these firemen instead of firing them.
First of all, there was never any due process, and I know due process because that was my job for 28 years. I know when a person has received due process and when they did not. Where are the disciplinary offenses for these young men that the mayor just took the jobs from them?
In the first place, you can’t just arbitrarily fire somebody when there is not a firing offense. That was also my job, to know whether or not there was an offense egregious enough to fire them. I read 100-and-something pages of that bull that they wrote in that report, and who needs to be fired is your Human Resources person. Your problem starts there, and it ends there, and it also ends in the mayor’s lap.
Unfortunately, I don’t know who that administrative person was who got on television and said in a public forum that they sent those guys home for administrative leave because of these documents here, which were their EEO complaints, which was EEO complaints filed against them.
Now what did they do? They discriminated against those guys. They retaliated against them because they filled an EEO complaint. Where in the heck is their legal people? Your legal people should have told them that. They allowed this man to say that on TV.
The other thing is, you say that you have no confidence in those two that was in charge. Tell me how much confidence you have in a man that left a man, a young man, down and caused his death. Maurice Bartholomew died because this person you are trying to make Chief left him in a fire.
The other thing is, you come up with these changes in your policies and procedure. I was also a drug testing program manager, and I’m looking at the city’s drug testing so-called policy, and that so-called policy says nothing about the chiefs being tested, only your [inaudible 00:36:03] unit people. Everything they did was wrong.
Everything a Human Resources person told them to do was incorrect. You should not have any confidence in that person’s ability to function in their job. That’s the person you ought to be removing, and I agree with this young man. We need to find Ashton Hayward another job.
Margie Brookerson (?): Sisson’s complaint with Schmitt and Glover intentionally and deceptively deviated from hiring protocol for the recent firefighter hiring around in the late January 2016. The evidence found in the report and in the HR manual proved that the hiring protocols for firefighters are not written. There is no written policy that mandates an interview panel. Furthermore, the investigator failed to prove Glover had anything to do with the decision to forego the panel and that either man acted deceptively.
As for Eric Olson, he went on the radio and went into lengthy and very specific detail about how the chiefs were put on administrative leave because of the EEOC complaint. Only after the mayor finally realized that this was blatant evidence of the culture of retaliation that exists at the City Hall, he did say that Olson misspoke. You don’t misspeak an entire speech that was given with great detail.
Van Sickle’s interviews with Glover, Schmitt and Jester were recorded and transcribed. Sisson’s conversations with the attorney were not, or at least the transcripts were not released. Why is that? Why are petty complaints that Sisson felt slighted by comments made at a banquet deserving a three-month, multi-thousand-dollar investigation? The same with a no-charge car rental upgrade that no one asked for. Why is that worthy of a multi-thousand-dollar investigation?
Mayor Hayward, due to the continued neglect of your office, I am here today with our total loss of confidence in your ability to lead the city of Pensacola. Our loss of confidence is due to your inability to manage your executive team and follow processes in place for the management of our city. You have made one poor choice after the other, with special deal for friends, hiring unqualified people, hiding the truth of your actions, and costing taxpayers thousands upon thousands of dollars in legal fees. You have cost the citizens of this city and wasted our time with your retaliatory actions.
This decision has not been an easy one to make, but we have the responsibility to ensure that our city has a leader that can bring out the best in all aspects of our community. We believe that your recall is a step in that direction.
Cheryl Cloister: Thank you. I’m here to take this time to complete the speech for Ms. Brown, and I’m addressing again our invisible mayor, Ashton Hayward. Now we know why he made this despicable decision, because you couldn’t allow someone who was doing your bidding to be demoted or terminated. You can’t fire Olson, Sisson, Wells or Bowling because they were doing exactly what you wanted them to do.
By the way, there will be evidence of collusion presented which will implicate your attorney and others. Don’t bother trying to cover any more tracks, because that train has already left the station. But if you insist on trying to cover anything else up, be my guest, because these around you have proven their ineptness to cover-ups. This is not over by a long shot.
Your ignorance and arrogance have exposed this city to even more expensive litigation, but what do you care? Just as long as you can continue to pay off your campaign contributors with our money, you don’t care. This is about this administration’s systemic racism, malfeasance, misfeasance, misadministration, incompetence, arrogance, and most of all, corruption. Ashton Hayward, we are your bosses, and we have no confidence in your ability to lead. It’s time for you to go. Recall the mayor.
Ashton Hayward, is this your way of recognizing Military Appreciation Month? Maybe your comments were meant for all veterans and service members except Chief Schmitt and Chief Glover.
By the way, Joe Glover regretfully could not be here tonight because he’s away on military duty, serving this country. I’m glad he is able to work with a leadership who really appreciates him and recognizes him for his dedication to service, unlike you. Thank you for your time.
Bill Caplinger: Sandbags. Sandbags are interesting tools. Flood control, a bunch of stuff, not very sophisticated, but amazing in use. There’s different kinds of sandbags.
The thing that struck me the most about what has come out so far from this very strange report is the obvious sandbagging that was done by city administration by pulling back any HR help to the Fire Department, not giving him information, not giving him training, and then putting him in a position that they then come back and say, “You did it wrong,” when they did nothing to do it. That is political sandbagging of the worst type, the worst type.
You’ve heard about one Rick Outzen editorial. Rick Outzen’s editorial today was also very good, where he talked about this city being played with by leadership as if it was Legos. You could just move stuff around. You could just play at municipal government. We talked about this Monday night. You can’t do that. You have professionals. There are ways to do this, and that’s probably the worst thing about all of that.
What I wanted to do tonight was to recognize the best speech that you would hear tonight. I’m going to recuse myself from that, but I want to show you what I brought: Lego City.
It has a little thing, and I want you to understand that it is adequately warned. It says, “Warning: choking hazard.” That’s definitely what’s going on here. It shows the Fire Department, and what I wanted to do was to offer …
Since the arbiter of all things is Mr. Olson, that he makes final decisions on everything, I was going to ask him to please decide who made the best or worst speech. However, I think he gets the award for not even being here.
Please deal with this. Please deal with this. You see that you have enormous support. I have very much confidence in you guys. We will help. Thank you.