TRUMBULL COUNTY Grant creates trouble at EMA

The EMA board will pay an LEPC employee overtime for his work.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
VIENNA -- Everything seemed fine at the Trumbull County Emergency Management Agency before the money started to pour in.
Disputes that began with a $45,000 federal grant for a new emergency operations plan have resulted in locks on doors, damaged feelings, and the end of cooperation among workers at the EMA, office manager Rebecca Whitman told the agency's board.
"You get that money and you have personalities involved, then you have a problem," Whitman said.
Employees in the three-person office are barely on speaking terms, she said.
As the result of a board directive to separate the business of the Local Emergency Planning Committee and the EMA, she is no longer allowed to help sole LEPC employee Don Waldron -- who shares the office -- with clerical work.
Waldron said he no longer maintains the nine trailers packed with emergency supplies that belong to the EMA from previous grants.
Payment questioned
Problems started last month when County Auditor David Hines questioned paying $3,000 from the $45,000 grant to Waldron after a clerk noted he works for LEPC.
Agencies are generally prohibited from awarding grants to their own employees.
In this case, the grant was through EMA, not LEPC, but the county prosecutor's office found a host of problems. Among them was the lack of a formal contract to have Waldron do the work and the fact that Waldron sits on the subcommittee that decided to hire him.
On Tuesday, the EMA board voted to pay Waldron 271 hours of overtime for work on the emergency operations plan, a solution proposed by county prosecutors.
Waldron, who makes $8.50 an hour, was unhappy that the money would have to go through payroll and be subject to payroll taxes.
The overtime pay will amount to about $5,800 for Waldron, said EMA director Linda Beil. Money also will be dished out to four others responsible for drawing up the plan.
Calls for strategic plan
Howland Fire Chief George Brown urged the board to create a strategic plan for guiding the agency and to help plan its purchases with the abundant grant money that has been coming in for several years.
"It is going to be a shame if we have been given $800,000 and we haven't met the needs that were called for, and we can't see what we've really accomplished," he said.
Equipment bought by the EMA is not accessible to fire departments, he said. He pointed out a thermal imaging camera, bought last month for $8,000 with money from a federal grant, as an example.
"I have no idea where it is, what it is used for, or how we get it," he said.
Bill Gregory, assistant Warren Township fire chief, who sits on the board, said until the township bought a vehicle last year, the fire department had no way to pull a utility trailer stuffed with EMA supplies parked in its station.
Beil said the agency has little flexibility in how it can spend grant money.
"We can't keep buying equipment," said Cheryl Oblinger, executive director of the Trumbull County Chapter of the American Red Cross, who also sits on the EMA board. "In so many ways we have kind of floundered. We really have to figure out where we want to be in three to five years."
siff@vindy.com