APPEAL HEARING
Fired 911 director argues case before commissioners
Catoosa County commissioners heard a grievance appeal Tuesday night, April 16, from former EMA and 911 Director Dennis Thayer, who was abruptly fired from his post in March.
Thayer, who was hired in March 2018, was fired by Catoosa County Manager Alisha Vaughn March 11 on the grounds that he allegedly failed to develop departmental policies as instructed and that he failed to cut back on the amount of time he was spending on out-of-town training sessions.
County policy allows terminated employees the opportunity to have their grievances heard.
Usually, grievances are submitted through a chain of command from a department head to the county manager, and then to the Board of Commissioners.
In this case, Thayer was a department head and the action he’s appealing was taken by the county manager, which is why the appeal was being heard directly by the Board of Commissioners.
County Attorney Chad Young prefaced the hearing’s testimony by pointing out that Thayer opted to have the hearing made public.
Traditionally, the board has given employees the option of having their appeal heard in an executive session, which is essentially closed-door as a personnel matter; however, Mr. Thayer requested to have his grievance heard in a public hearing portion of an open meeting.
On Nov. 28, Thayer claims Vaughn communicated to him she wanted his first priority to be developing policies and to curtail some of his out-of-town training trips.
“She states in here (in the termination letter) that I had not reduced any of my training trips and that no policies had been done,” Thayer said. “These statements are both false.”
Thayer said that when he took over the position in March 2018, there were no policies specifically at the 911 Center.
“There were no department policies when I took over,” Thayer said.
Thayer added that on the day he was fired, he had approximately 30-40 policies available in draft format based on the November conversation he and Vaughn had about developing such policies. He also claimed that 23 policies have been enacted since he took over the position.
As for the directive that he was to scale back the number of out-oftown training sessions he attended, Thayer says he also complied with that command.
“After our Nov. 28 meeting, I canceled seven scheduled classes I had throughout the remainder of this spring. That was 13 days of training I cancelled,” Thayer said.
In all, Thayer told commissioners he was tasked with acquiring five specific certifications when he was hired to meet the demands of the position.
“This equaled 51 days of training,” Thayer said. “These are classes that I had to take to meet the qualifications and the requirements set forth upon me when I was hired. I wasn’t taking these classes because I enjoyed them or because I just wanted to take classes. I was taking these classes to meet the requirements of my job.”
One of the biggest incidents that Vaughn claims led to the firing was an instance where she denied Thayer permission to attend a training session, but claims he wound up going anyway without telling her.
“I told him he could not attend and he attended anyway,” Vaughn said. “I was not aware that Mr. Thayer attended the training. I heard that from a third party.”
Both Vaughn and Thayer gave differing accounts of an email exchange regarding that trip, with Thayer adamantly denying that he would deliberately disobey orders from his superior.
“I have a public safety career that has lasted 37 years and it’s a very positive public safety career,” Thayer said. “I have never, ever taken the stance to completely ignore what I was told by a supervisor and do the opposite. There is no win-win in that for me. Why would I do that? It doesn’t make any logical sense.”
As the hearing progressed, Thayer also claimed he wasn’t given a performance “appraisal” as laid out in the county’s employee handbook. He further contends that his firing was done outside of policy because employees are supposed to be granted and notified of a “dismissal conference.”
Thayer said he was blindsided by the firing while others knew it was coming.
“She (Vaughn) already met with the interim 911 director early that morning. She had already told other people she was going to fire me that day. Yet in violation of policy, I wasn’t told that that was what I was walking into,” Thayer said.
After Thayer presented his side of things, Vaughn defended her decision to fire him.
“I did not feel like he was focusing on getting policies in place at 911,” Vaughn said.
She also stated that not having the county’s EMA director available when needed, him not following directives was unacceptable.
“I believe it is a very serious issue when your EMA/911 director is out of the office. If we had had any kind of emergency whatsoever, we were not covered because he did not tell me in advance (he would be out).”
Now, Thayer must wait on a decision from commissioners, who were tasked with gathering information during the hearing and are required to provide a decision in writing within 30 days to either affirm the Vaughn’s decision to fire Thayer, or to overturn the decision and reinstate Thayer.