Sumpter board approves full pay of furloughed employees as of April 14

During a 38-minute special meeting on April 2, the Sumpter Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously to pay all employees full pay through April 13 and to furlough eight employees with full pay from April 14 until further notice.
One name was withdrawn after the furlough vote, so seven employees were furloughed until April 13, in compliance with Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Stay Home order.
Clerk Esther Hurt and Treasurer Ken Bednark were absent and excused from the meeting.
Furloughed were Anna Winter, Brad Wheelock, Dawn Hadyniak, Karen Woodington, Peter Gregory, Sue Dufresne, and Erica Campbell. The name of Richard Morgan, a driver for the senior center, was withdrawn from the original list.
The recommendation for the furloughs came from a committee convened by Supervisor John Morgan which had met for an hour on the Monday before the special Thursday meeting.
At the committee meeting were Supervisor Morgan, Clerk Hurst, Human Resources Director Michelle Bellingham, Finance Director Michelle Cole, Public Safety Director Eric Luke, Water Superintendent Ken Kunka and Deputy Supervisor Karen Amatis. They held a phone conference with labor attorney Stacy Belisle and then decided the special meeting was in order.
At the April 2 meeting, Trustee Don LaPorte asked why taxpayers should be paying for people not needed. He said they should be collecting unemployment now if they’re not needed.
Trustee Don Swinson said when the governor’s order came down to close, that’s when Atchinson Ford, where he works, closed.
“Government workers are exempt from that,” Trustee LaPorte said. “We’re deemed essential on that list.”
Supervisor Morgan said the township is doing what is consistent with communities around it. He said the committee talked about the pros and cons for an hour or more and, “I think we made the right decision.”
LaPorte said he’s not looking backward to criticize past decisions, but he’s looking forward at the township residents paying people to stay at home when the rest of the working world people are at home struggling.
“It’s not consistent with the working world,” LaPorte said.
Supervisor Morgan said it was consistent with other communities.
Trustee Swinson said it was three weeks pay and then on furlough to keep them safe if they’re not needed.
Trustee Matt Oddy said the goal is to keep everyone safe, “But, I would choose two weeks rather than three weeks, if we had been consulted before the decision was made.”
LaPorte said if an employee is essential, the employee is needed and could come in and do the job more than six feet apart.
“Somebody essential should be here working their 40 hours and if not, furloughed,” LaPorte said, noting it was an easy call.
Township attorney Rob Young, seated in the audience, said the decision on this is to be made during this meeting and it’s up to the board to decide.
“Employees don’t decide who’s essential,” Young said. “Who is essential is the board’s decision.”
Young said the township has had problems with operations and they’re working with water billing and the sewer department and very difficult challenges.
“We should be working together and that’s not the case … That needs to change to protect the integrity of the citizens,” Young said, noting the choice is the board’s on what to do with the recommendation.
“Who do you want as essential? It’s up to the board,” he said.
“We’re making approval on what happened for the last two weeks and one week ahead,” Oddy said. He said these are trying times with emergencies and the board didn’t have a chance to decide before the last two weeks.
Young said the township is trying to react to uncertainties, with new orders coming out every other day. [His comments were hard to hear because he was back in the meeting room away from the microphone as he talked.] “I want to thank the people who came together … came into the offices to make these kinds of decisions … to keep the township moving forward, which is important,” Oddy said.
“I appreciate you guys being here, trying to do this,” Young replied to the board.
“I agree with Matt,” LaPorte said. “It’s key there’s some kind of consistency for all of our residents. I’d like everyone essential to get back to work on April 6. That’s if they are essential and they can work safely, and the rest furlough.”
He said people can stay six feet apart and isolate themselves from the public.
LaPorte said the fire department, on which he serves, has made 100 calls working safely. As long as things are clean, it can be done, he said. When Morgan asked how many calls are medical, LaPorte said 95%.
He repeated that they should have everyone working the following Monday. He said the township doesn’t really know how many cases of COVID-19 are in Sumpter or Van Buren Township or Belleville.
“We don’t really know,” he said, adding it’s the 48111 designation and there could be none in one community and all in another community or some in all three.
Oddy said he would like to have everyone back on the sixth, but he doesn’t want to second-guess that committee that got together.
“I think it should have been the sixth,” he said, but they recommended the 13th, Oddy said.
Swinson said the Stay at Home date is the 13th, set by the governor. He said Atchinson Ford can’t come back until the 13th. He suggested they stay with the committee’s recommendation of the 13th. He said if a family or friends are touched by this, it would be difficult.
“Essential workers need to be here, but I don’t want to be that person to have it on my conscience,” he said, urging the board members to stick with the 13th.
“I say we just roll with that” date suggested by the committee, Trustee Rush said.
LaPorte said everyone that works in the township hall is essential and only department heads know who they can keep or let go.
“This is the stuff that will be in history books,” LaPorte said of the coronavirus situation.
In other business at the April 2 meeting, the board:
• Approved the recommendation of Director Luke to hire Nickolas Allan Toth, 33, as a full-time police officer to fill the vacancy created by the Feb. 28 death of Det./Cpl. John Ashby. The approval is contingent upon his successful completion of medical, drug, and psychological tests. Luke said Toth is no relation to another Sumpter officer, Det. John Toth. Nickolas Toth resides in Jackson and attended the police academy at Schoolcraft College, graduating last November. He’s worked as a Michigan Medicine Security Officer with the University of Michigan Division of public Safety from 2011 through 2019, reaching the rank of sergeant. Luke said the board had just been talking about essential and non-essential employees and he wants them to know the minute he walks in their door, he’s an essential employee for them. “I think we’re in for it,” Luke said. “I think we’re in for a bumpy ride…;
• Also approved Luke’s request to start Officer Toth at the six-month pay grade, rather than beginning pay. “He’s put himself in a strange position, in terms of his safety and his family’s safety,” Luke said, adding starting him at six-month pay is the right thing to do in this day and age, “a slight bump in pay so he can feel secure”;
• Approved payables of $73,973.92;
• Heard Deputy Supervisor Armatis give a report, stating the supervisor’s office is working daily with the clerk’s office and the police chief and senior coordinator to keep all residents updated. She said they change the updates daily on the website and post them on the doors. She said the senior coordinator makes sure the seniors are fed and on Thursday she goes shopping for the homebound. She said the police, fire, and water departments remain on duty to serve the residents. “We all remain committed to take care of our residents,” she said;
• Heard Trustee LaPorte report that UAW 4 Ford delivered four big boxes containing 1,000 face masks for the fire department to use and they have started using them. He said they were made at Dearborn Truck;
• Heard Trustee Oddy say he supports Director Luke and he read the “lies” in the paper, referring to a letter to the editor in the April 2 edition of the Independent. Oddy said he was a witness and says Luke didn’t come within two inches of the editor, as alleged. [The letter-writer sat beind the editor during the encounter and was a much-closer witness than Oddy and alleges he did try to intimidate her.] “The board made the right decision in changing papers…” Oddy said, referring to changing the newspaper of record to The Eagle, which he had before him at the board table;
• Heard Trustee Rush say, “Mr. Oddy stole my thunder.” Rush said the chief has taken a lot of criticism and Rush wanted the chief to know “the support you have in this township is very deep.” Rush suggested Luke just ignore any criticisms. Applause broke out among the few township employees in the meeting room;
• Heard township attorney Rob Young, who had been admonished by board members in the past for giving his personal opinions during board meetings, launched an attack on the Independent, as well, calling it “that garbage paper.” Young said he was asked if he had something to do with having the Independent removed as newspaper of record in February and he said he didn’t. He said if he could have it would have happened 15 years ago. [The Independent had been newspaper of record for just 13 years.] He accused the Independent of printing a letter to the editor it knew was a falsehood. “It’s gotta hurt you … that the paper prints that kind of crap,” he said to Luke. He continued, “It just affirms, from a spectator’s stand, that that paper never could have deserved to be newspaper of record.” He said this letter to the editor is an article on a police chief when the township is on red alert. “Your public safety director is defamed in the newspaper when people need to have appreciation for the police chief … She felt it more important to defame him … No words … to really describe how I feel,” Young said.