Saturday, February 26, 2005

It happened quietly...

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll recall Phoenix recently had a problem with water. I've blogged on this extensively. The latest chapter in the saga is that the former Water Director has been fired.
Phoenix officials fired the city's water director Friday, four weeks after he had been reassigned to other duties in the wake of the city's water scare in late January.

City managers wouldn't give specifics on why they fired Mike Gritzuk, a 17-year veteran who was responsible for issuing an advisory last month that urged the city's 1.4 million water users to boil water before drinking.

Gritzuk said he is suing to recoup damage to his reputation, adding that he was "flabbergasted" when he was told late Thursday that he was fired as of 5 p.m. Friday. [azcentral.com | news]
This should not have come as a surprise. If you read the transcript below you can see that his superiors were all blindsided when the city was put under a boil water advisory last month. The subsequent investigation showed a slew of problems in the Water Services Department which indirectly lead to the problems.
>> Michael Grant:
Does this report point a very strong finger at the Water Services Director and fix much of the blame there?

>> Claude Mattox:
What it does is it identifies problems that were within the system. I'm not going to blame any one person. I think overall, the Water Services Department needs to look at their communications process. They need to look at their emergency procedures. They need to practice what's in this book when they have a problem and then we as a city need to look at our overall process in communications and emergency processes to make sure that we don't have a repeat of this problem with other departments in the city of Phoenix.

>> Michael Grant:
Has he been relieved of his duties?

>> Phil Gordon:
He has been relieved of those duties, temporarily assigned on special assignment in another area, not related to water.

>> Michael Grant:
An Arizona Republic investigation of the city records shows the City of Phoenix Water Department received hundreds of state and federal violations costing the city more than $1.6 million since 1988. The Republic found that top water officials gave inconsistent responses to state and federal regulators, down played violations by claiming there was no danger to public health over non-compliance and gave incorrect and false information to city managers. The Arizona Republic also reported that Phoenix Water Services Director Mike Gritzuk was suspended for five days over the way he handled an earlier audit. Councilman Mattox, I seem to recall talking to you about the environmental group report about a year and a half ago. Were you aware of the problems that the Republic discussed?

>> Claude Mattox:
I was not aware of all of the problems at that time. And when we had the conversation, if I remember, we had the director of ADEQ here with us, as well, having the same conversation on it and we were talking about how the report from the natural resources defense -- I can't -- defense committee or something to that effect was basically a report about a report. They were talking about how we weren't -

>> Michael Grant:
Reporting issues, different data sets. Those kind of things. This seems to indicate that the problems were much more fundamental.

>> Claude Mattox:
Well, I'm not going to -- Now that I know what I know at this point, that this was symptomatic of some of the issues that we were dealing with, I was not aware of some of the infractions prior to myself coming on the Council which was five years ago. I was aware of some of the things identified in the republic after the fact, which was the lab issue that Mr. Gritzuk got suspended for five days on. We now know there was a history of things happening in the department that ultimately, I would say, in this particular case the events that occurred on January 24th and 25th brought Frank Fairbanks the city manager to the point where he felt it was necessary to reassign Mr. Gritzuk.

>> Michael Grant:
Was the city manager actively kept out of this loop? A million six should have given some indications to somebody we may have structural problems here.

>> Phil Gordon:
You know, Michael, this report, what it does is create a time line and it shows very clearly that not only the city manager and deputy city manager, senior elected officials were not only unaware of the protocols that should have been followed that the plant had problems as early as Saturday, significant problems, but that until after the process we didn't learn about some of the problems or weren't notified. The city manager Frank Fairbanks, under the charter is responsible for the personnel matters, we're responsible to make sure that it gets fixed. The city manager determined that in order to have a complete and open audit, seamless, that he needed to reassign and relieve the director of his duties. What happens at this point will be up to the city manage on that and any other personnel. I think you asked a question that I would like to address based on my review of the report. There was clearly a culture within the water department that is unhealthy for the safety of our community and that was --

>> Michael Grant:
How so?

>> Phil Gordon:
To keep information within the actual operation and not follow the protocols that were established by the city manager and deputy city manager. Again, not that at 1:30 in the morning somebody should have issued a boil advisory alert or not, but whether city management should have been brought in earlier, certainly whether the elected officials should have been brought in earlier. And also, after that issue was given to the public at 1:30 in the morning, then to contact both the city management team and the elected officials so that we could determine the actions at that point.

>> Michael Grant:
Councilman Mattox, the problem here is that if these problems were systemic, going on for a long time, apparently they date back to at least 1988, okay, you have a problem in the Water Services Department, but doesn't it speak to the level of supervision and oversight that the city manager's office was giving to the water services department? Which I would think would be one of the city's key departments.

>> Claude Mattox:
Absolutely. It's probably, along with our solid waste people expect when they turn the tap on, the water is there, and so to answer your question, Frank Fairbanks is responsible for personnel. What I understand is that when we ran into issues, Frank took corrective actions on those issues. To my knowledge, it was a progression of steps that ultimately ended up with Mr. Gritzuk being suspended for five days. And I can't tell you what specific investigations or reviews were done on Mr. Gritzuk because our charter prohibits City Council getting involved in personnel issues so we have to respect Frank Fairbanks' decision on that.

>> Michael Grant:
But you do have ability to hire and fire city managers?

>> Phil Gordon:
Mike, let me be clear. First off, we have the top city manager in this country, I back the city manager and I know all my colleagues do. The city manager thought he had taken the appropriate action and that was based on all the information he got, you can only make decisions based on what you have, he had corrected that. We learned through this incident that was not the case. When he learned about it, he immediately took the action of getting him out of there. [Horizon Transcripts February 15, 2005]
Still think Gritzuk should be surprised? This shows he had problems in the past and that they weren't well known by everyone. Now that everything is in the light of day it makes sense that he is fired.

Previous Posts:
What the f#@%...
City water advisory
Maricopa County: Safety Measures for the Boil Water Advisory Headlines Wednesday
Phoenix water woe roundup... with links to local bloggers
Update Phoenix water woes...

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