"Beacon's Water Department Is A Completely Caucasian Department... Some Of Their [Highway Department Employees'] Behaviors Are Questionable"
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For the record, since this statement was made about the Water Department being “completely Caucasian,” on September 21, 2020, a person of Color may have been hired to the Water Department.
Related Links:
During Hot Mess Of Water Department Hires, Beacon Passes Diversity and Inclusion Statement
Why Black Lives Matter (BLM) Signs In Storefront Windows Still Matter In 2021
On September 21, 2020, many issues were discussed in the public City Council meeting: how the virtual Spirit of Beacon Day Parade was going to work (a day that was founded as a method of healing, coming together, and showing appreciation after racial eruptions and riots in Beacon in the 1970s), the spike in COVID-19 cases in a local nursing home, easements for Edgewater (a hot-button property for development hawks), handling of the 2020 Assessment Roll as it pertains to Property Taxes, etc.
The promotions of 3 employees of the Highway Department that were also on the agenda otherwise seemed mundane. Under the surface, however, in private meetings of City Council called “Executive Session,” where no press or the public is allowed, these promotions were a loaded topic. Steve Bechtold, Peter Delfico, and Nicholas Durso are Highway Department employees slated to receive promotions.
In order to approve the promotion, the City Council needed to vote on it. The vote was postponed that night, after Stefon Seward, a community member called in during Public Comment to voice his concern, was later validated by Councilmember Jodi McCredo, who stated she was uncomfortable with the vote. The vote was tabled, and A Little Beacon Blog has reached out to the City of Beacon to see if any movement has been made since then. We are awaiting a response, but the City usually doesn’t comment on personnel questions.
This article explores the details between the question from a member of the public at the beginning of the meeting, and the response from a Councilmember, which was almost silenced by the then-City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero (who has since left that job) by the end of the meeting.
Question On “Behaviors Are Questionable” Expanded Upon
Stefon Seward, a founding member of Beacon4BlackLives and an appointed committee member to the Beacon Police Chief Search Committee, called in to that September 21, 2020 night of the City Council Meeting to voice his concerns about the promotions in the Highway Department.
He stated: “I'm calling to talk about the 3 individuals that are going to get a raise, who you are voting on today. I think you should put a freeze on that, because some of their behaviors are questionable. I think there should be a little more talk before they get that raise.”
A Little Beacon Blog inquired about what behaviors Stefon was referring to. In an earlier podcast recorded this summer at “Wait, What Is That?” ALBB learned from Reuben Simmons, a Highway Department employee, that Steve Bechtold had brought a personal gun to work on company time, making other employees uncomfortable. Reuben, who is Black, emailed management Michael (Micky) Manzi about it. Michael is the current department head (Reuben used to be his boss, but was demoted on a job title technicality), Superintendent of Streets. Michael emailed back that Steve would be told not to bring the firearm to work in the future.
Reuben requested to have Michael’s email about the gun included in Reuben’s personnel file, but City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero declined that request, Reuben told ALBB.
The bringing in of the gun was about 6 months after Reuben filed a harassment claim against Steve in 2019, after Steve allegedly circulated an unsanctioned petition which advocated to have Reuben not be on a negotiation committee for the Highway Department’s new contract, which has remained unsigned after it expired (the City of Beacon’s website links to a latest contract of 2015), and is up for renewal any day, or whenever it makes it to the next agenda of the public City Council meetings.
According to Reuben, who served as CSEA Union President from 2009 to 2017, Steve made an assumption that Reuben was on the negotiation committee, and Steve did not want him there, so he had written a petition and circulated it around to the white employees of the Highway Department, without showing it to the 2 other Black employees also in the Highway Department, according to Reuben.
Reuben learned about the petition, and went to the department’s current Union President, Paula Becker, about it, who allegedly said she did not know about the petition. “My issue was that if you're going to petition,” Reuben told ALBB, “show it to everybody so that it's fair.”
Paula works for the City of Beacon as a staff member, in addition to serving as the Union President for CSEA. The union structure is to have the president also be an employee of the city. When A Little Beacon Blog reached out to Paula in her capacity as union president to confirm a future development concerning Reuben’s current employment status with the City of Beacon, the current City Administrator Chris White (Chris replaced Anthony Ruggiero in January 2021) gave instruction not to contact any staff about these issues, and to contact him directly. Chris also did not comment as to Reuben’s current employment status.
According to Reuben, the 2 other Black employees were then shown the petition, and did not sign. The petition allegedly was delivered to Paula’s desk. Superintendent Manzi knew about the petition, Reuben said, as he and Manzi discussed it during a meeting with then-Mayor Randy Casale in his office. “Management [Michael Manzi] should not have been influencing and condoning this behavior,” Reuben told ALBB. Current Mayor Lee Kyriacou was a city councilmember at the time.
To follow up on the harassment claim rooted in the petition against Steve, then-City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero inquired with Paula to see the petition, but that time he was told that this was a Union issue, and protected under certain laws, according to Reuben. No one saw the petition after that, according to Reuben. He said that the City of Beacon, by way of City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero, did not investigate the harassment claim, citing that there was no physical evidence of its existence.
Months later, when the gun was allegedly brought to work, Reuben did not seek to file another harassment claim because of how his first claim was handled. Reuben still wonders why the petition to keep him off a committee was circulated, since he was not on the negotiation committee in the first place, he told ALBB.
It should be noted that the City Administrator works with a labor attorney on these issues. In this issue, the City was working with Lance H. Klein of Keane & Beane, the law firm that the city works with on real estate, labor, etc. When ALBB first started reaching out to get more information on this employment story in the summer of 2020, City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero could not answer all of our questions, and CCed the labor attorney Lance Klein on the responses, and offered to have a phone call instead.
This year, City Administrator Chris White has also offered to have a phone call in response to questions asked about job titles, and has decided that until an in-person conversation about how ALBB writes articles happens, after the publication of yesterday’s article “During Hot Mess Of Water Department Hires, Beacon Passes Diversity and Inclusion Statement,” he will not be answering any questions from ALBB.
“Completely Caucasian Department” - Diversity Needed
Now that we have partially unpacked that issue from 2019, let’s get back to September 21, 2020, the night of the City Council meeting and votes for Highway Department promotions. Stefon went on to state: “We need more diversity in the Water Department. It is a completely Caucasian department, and that's a little scary, being that we are a diverse town. I feel that we need to have a diversity look in every walk of life, everything we do for our town.”
A Little Beacon Blog looked into the demographics of the Water Department. The City of Beacon will not release stats, even when we asked about the demographics of the Police Department and were told by then-City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero to submit a FOIL to get the information. The FOIL was apparently ignored. This was before the City of Beacon published all of the names of the police officers on their website, after pressure from the national Black Lives Matter movement that went local on Beacon’s Main Street in the form of protests, emails, and calls into public City Council meetings, along with the New York State ordered re-imagining of the policing in the community with Executive Order 203.
To get an idea of the demographics, we asked for thoughts from Reuben Simmons, who has worked for the City of Beacon since 2002, and who served as the union president for the City of Beacon CSEA Local 814 unit 6662 from 2009 to 2017. His response: “I did look into it a few years ago while I was the union president, because an employee from the Water Department who was white was uncomfortable with racial slurs being spoken regularly by Water Department employees, including supervisors, in reference to other city employees who were Black. It resulted in me having to have an employee transferred from the Water Department to the Highway Department.”
City of Beacon Regulates Personal Guns In The Workplace in 2021
On December 14, 2020, during a City Council workshop meeting, Beacon’s new HR Director, Gina Basile, introduced new policies that she wanted the City of Beacon to adopt, one being a Firearms Policy. The Firearms Policy states that City employees cannot bring personal guns or weapons of any kind, including knives that are 4 inches or longer, and cannot store them on City property (ie inside of a locker or vehicle).
During that December 14, 2020, public City Council meeting, the councilmembers pondered the ramifications of this for Police Officers, wondering if this was confusing with their professional guns used for work. Gina and Anthony advised that there was no crossover; guns assigned for work were fine. The City Councilmembers were mostly certain that no person would bring a personal gun to work, but Councilperson Dan Aymar-Blair said that he had received a complaint from a constituent about a police officer bringing a personal gun to work.
Councilmember Jodi McCredo’s Statement To Pause Highway Department Promotions, Wanting More Information
Councilmember Jodi McCredo has been aware of the employee tensions in the Highway Department for some time, as have other councilmembers and Mayor Lee Kyriacou. Years ago, Jodi was the subject of a hand-delivered, unsigned letter written in the first person (using the word “I”) but from the Highway Department at large, delivered to her front porch.
That letter described discontent using ill logic at the appointment of a fellow employee, Reuben Simmons, to the position of Highway Superintendent (which he was later stripped of, using Civil Service rules to legally do so). The letter stated that the appointment did not encourage promoting “from within,” despite Reuben being a current employee. It was if he did not exist. A Little Beacon Blog has seen that letter, and published it along with the podcast here. At the time years ago, Jodi brought in the letter to a private Executive Session meeting, not knowing what to do with it, she told ALBB.
The results of that letter campaign resulted in Dutchess County telling the City of Beacon that Reuben did not have the qualifications to hold the Superintendent of Streets title because he “never held a supervisors title.” Thereby moving him and his salary back down to Maintenance Worker. The Superintendent of Streets position went to Michael (Micky) Manzi after Mark, the City’s first candidate off the Dutchess County list, turned the job down, according to Reuben.
Michael Manzi currently holds the position today. Back then, on February 4, 2019, Jodi was part of a unanimous public City Council vote for Michael’s promotion, where before casting it, she turned to the audience in the courtroom and asked: “What do you guys think?” She was met with shouts of agreement and applause, which can be seen on the Council video here at the bottom of the page. Jodi has gone on to say to ALBB that the letter “had absolutely no influence on any decisions.”
Back to September 21, 2020, with the promotion of the 3 Highway Department employees on the agenda for the evening. Jodi was not so sure this time. Resulting from Stefon’s comments, and having the prior experience of not knowing details and then learning them later, Jodi moved forward with speaking about her hesitation concerning the promotions. She stated:
“Stefon Seward mentioned a couple of things that I want to address: He spoke about people getting raises today. I want to clarify - “ At this point in her statement, then City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero, who has since left this job for another in Dutchess County, attempted to interrupt her to stop her from speaking with an "Um…".
Normally, the City Administrator likes the Council to not discuss personnel issues in public, but Jodi continued and kept speaking.
“It’s not an issue with a raise, it's an issue with a promotion because of position. But I also want to go back to something I have said in the past many times, which is I really don't feel comfortable voting on things like that without having all of the information. I don't know what it was he [Stefon] was referring to when he said what he said. Now I am in a position again where I do feel uncomfortable about this and I do think it is something we need to talk about.
“I'm just going to throw that out there because if I'm not in the situation and people aren't coming to me, I don't know what questions to ask, and it's a little awkward. I also want to put out to the public if you do have information that you think Councilmembers should have before a vote, please share that information with us. You have our phone numbers and you have our email addresses. Contact us, talk to us. Inform us. Nine times out of 10 we don't know, and that helps us know what questions to ask and what information to look for. I'm not saying anything about what he said specifically, because I have no idea. But the point is, I have no idea. And I probably should.”
All of the other City Council Members agreed to table the promotion, and Air Nonken Rhodes made an enthusiastic motion to move the discussion to Executive Session, where it could be further discussed in private.
There are times when people do know or are told about something, but may not be presented with paper documentation to prove something without a doubt, and then the information gets dismissed, contributing to a silent segregation. During this time, decades after the Civil Rights movement resulted in laws that are intended to prevent discrimination, actions taken even within those laws can still create a form of silent segregation that is harder to prove.
While the City of Beacon recently apparently hired a person of Color in the Water Department - Ricardo Brown - Mayor Kyriacou stated the night of that vote that diversity was added. Not only has the City of Beacon not confirmed with A Little Beacon Blog what Ricardo’s job title is - after a possible mix-up on the City’s agenda for Justin Herring (the agenda said Justin was Water and Sewer Superintendent but Edward Balicki is currently listed as that, even though Ed’s LinkedIn has him listed as Chief Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator at City of Beacon) - having true diversity means to embrace others, to listen to them, and believe them. Call them back after a job interview. Include an email complaint in a personnel file.
As to the confusing development of Water Department job titles after October 5, 2020’s meeting to hire employees, City Administrator Chris White has declined to provide confirmation.
Diversity Is Not Guaranteed By A PDF On A Wall Or Website
Any city can put up a PDF of a Diversity and Inclusion Statement on the City of Beacon on a wall or on a website, but that’s not a guarantee that diversity or even fairness and decency are happening. Not when complaints are ignored, dodged and delayed with FOIL requests. When Mayor Lee Kyriacou said that Beacon delivered diversity on October 5, 2020, with the hire of one person of Color, that does not make the diversity cup even half-full.
Diversity is speaking up against a vote. It is believing a story. It is asking questions about a story in public to find more connections in order to believe it. Diversity is being anti-racist, which means that you are actively speaking up against something that feels like a person was just made to feel invisible, and then became invisible, with a legal checkmate of a demotion. Diversity means to question current Civil Service laws, to see if they are working as intended, or if they are protecting a comfort level that doesn’t serve all equally.
And these are only the stories we know about. When a City does not comment to confirm a story told at a City Council meeting, like when Wendel Henson called in to say that he was interviewed for a position in the Water Department and was never contacted after that, these stories will require paper documentation, which the City will not release, and the reader will be left to wonder. Which often leads to doubt, but then fades away.
Silent segregation.
