Sumpter Twp. board promotes two cops, fires one fire fighter

The Sumpter Township Board of Trustees promoted two police officers and fired one fire fighter at its regular meeting April 13 held via zoom.
Police Lt. Patrick Gannon was promoted to captain and Police Sergeant John Toth was promoted to lieutenant. These were the only two business items on that evening’s agenda.
But there was a lengthy public hearing at the end of the meeting and the board voted 5-2 to fire Colleen Armatis from her position as fire fighter.
Trustee Peggy Morgan voted “Hell, no” and Treasurer Jim Clark voted no.
The consideration of Armatis’ employment was originally put on the agenda as a closed-door session for the board, but Armatis asked that it be open to the public at the zoom meeting.
[Three days after the meeting, the township board members were advised that Fire Chief Joe Januszyk was put on administrative by Director of Public Safety/Police Chief Eric Luke, who then left on vacation. Rick Brown is acting chief.] During the board meeting, Director /Chief Luke said he got a phone call that alerted him to a situation and he had conducted a lengthy investigation. He had put papers out across an 18’ table to reach the conclusion that Armatis should be fired for paying herself twice for the same hours spent at work at the fire department.
Throughout the meeting, totals of $1,100 or $1,400 were mentioned in passing.
Armatis had been assigned a work detail to do part of the payroll and if there was a fire run while she was working on the payroll she responded. She paid herself for the work detail and the run, Luke said. This had been allowed in the past and changed with the approval of a new contract in January 2020. Fire training on computer on the clock also had been allowed in the past.
Fire Chief Januszyk said he told Armatis they had to be careful of the new union contract that no longer allowed the “double tap” and spoke with her about it three times. At the end of the meeting, when Trustee Morgan pressed him to say what discipline he would suggest for Armatis, he was against termination.
Jim Steffes of the Michigan Association of Fire Fighters spoke on behalf of Armatis. He said the new contract took effect in January 2020. He said Armatis would like to make a statement, but the union attorney recommended against it. Steffes said he would speak for Armatis.
Steffes said there was a system of double taps before this contract and fire fighters were getting paid for runs or credit for other runs for a bonus at the end of the year. Armatis was doing payroll before January 2020. She was not given any training to understand the proper way to do it, he said.
“In fact, from January 2020 to August 2020, the chief signed and approved all of the work,” Steffes said. “He is the ultimate authority … He is the one responsible…”
Steffe said the first time Chief Januszyk sat down with her to explain it was in late August and that’s how it got corrected. He said she is a fire fighter, not a CPA or a bookkeeping expert, and she forgot to pull out the overlapping calls in October and November.
He said in December he caught her again and said you have to do this right and she went back and did it right. In January she did it right. In February, Armatis went out on medical leave and Chief Luke did it and 16 fire fighters were incorrectly paid and it had to be redone the following month.
“Colleen is a fire fighter/EMT,” Steffe continued. “She turned in all of her information to the chief and Human Resources. Are you telling me over all those months nobody checked anything and now you’re blaming it on Colleen?…
“She said ‘I screwed it up, but nobody showed me how or gave me any written policy.’ You’ve got to remember there are two sides to any story,” Steffe said.
“Before terminating anybody – the death penalty as we refer to it in labor – you’ve got to look at all sides to it,” he said.
He said Armatis has been an asset to the fire department for many years and he said Director Luke himself said that. She comes in on her own time and goes to the store for the department on her own time and doesn’t get paid for what she bought for the department.
He said progressive discipline is called for in the contract and termination is for the most serious conduct, not for a mistake.
“I don’t think this young lady should be thrown under the bus,” Steffe said. “I wouldn’t rush to judgement and her actions were not meant to harm or injure or with malice.”
Trustee Morgan said on Monday, she and Clark went to Chief Luke’s office with township attorney Rob Young and Chief Januszyk to watch the video of the interview with Armatis.
“In the video, Ms. Armatis said if, ‘I did it for me, I did it for everyone.’ She wanted you to pull Chief Januszyk’s records to show this. She asked you to do it. Did you?” she asked Luke.
“Looking at his records wasn’t going to show me anything,” Luke said. “Chief Januszyk gets paid for everything.”
“She did it for him,” Steffes said. “A credibility issue.”
Chief Januszyk said Armatis has a key to the filing cabinet and there’s money in there. Nothing has ever been missing, he said. He said she could have signed for a run and nobody would have known the difference.
Chief Januszyk said somebody knew about this for 14 months and didn’t tell him.
“They set her up,” Chief Januszyk said. “If they would have told me … Somebody sat on this for 14 months… That person is as guilty as she was.
Luke said he chose to start investigating in January because that gave him a full year of figures.
“I could have gone back to January 2019,” he said.
Trustee Morgan said she would like all the board members to see the video before making a decision.
“This is somebody’s reputation,” Trustee Morgan said. “We need to talk … I wish we would have had the documents … We need some time to take to look at all the evidence … Everyone should look at this video … listening to two sides.”
She said originally this item was postponed for 30 days and then it was suddenly put on the agenda.
“Are you saying I misrepresented the contents of the video to the board?” Luke asked Morgan.
“I am not saying that,” Morgan said. She said there is more to see than what was looked at.
“They put in hours and hours of training to be a fire fighter,” Morgan said. “And, throw it away for a mistake?”
“When we watched the tape, we couldn’t believe what we heard… There’s more to this,” Morgan said.
When board members peppered Januszyk with questions on whether he had properly trained Armatis, Januszyk replied, “I thought I did. I told her to take out double taps. I would have to say yes.”
In other business at the two-hour-and-50-minute meeting, the board:
• Learned the senior center would be closed May 5-17 because Senior Coordinator Mary Ann Watson will be on vacation and there is no one to fill in for her.