Framingham Town Manager Issues Statement on Health Department

Framingham Town Manager Bob Halpin issued the following statement on the Framingham Halth Department at Thursday night’s selectmen’s meeting on May 7.

And today, Interim Director of Public Health Roberto Santamaria has voluntarily resigned his position with the Town to pursue other employment opportunities effective May 8, said Halpin.

Santamaria is the third health director to leave since 2013.

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STATEMENT:

It would appear that the conflict which has been emanating from the Framingham Board of Health over the past 6 weeks has abated.

In making this statement, it is not my intention to reignite that conflict but rather to respond to the many requests to comment on what has transpired within the Department of Public Health.

When I began as Town Manager here in Framingham in June of 2012, the Department of Public Health was frankly a department that had given up on many of the core functions of a local public health department. Among other things, I was dismayed to learn that restaurants and other high risk public facilities were not regularly inspected and that a backlog of uninspected locations existed.

To be fair, the Health Department was severely understaffed.

Late in the summer of 2012, I instructed the then-Director of Public Health to prepare a strategic plan for the department that would serve as the basis for improving the department, expressed a willingness to provide additional financial resources to increase staff, but insisted that the plan include clear performance standards and metrics and provide accountability.

Six months later and well into the budget preparation time table, I had still not received the plan, the metrics, or a request for personnel or resources.

In fact, a budget request for FY 2014 for the Health Department was never even submitted to the CFO and the amount presented to the 2013 Annual Town Meeting was simply a level funded budget based on the FY 2013 Budget.

The Director at that time resigned in April 2013.

I recruited and hired a new Director of Public Health in September 2013. The new Director set upon the task of preparing a plan to rebuild the department. He realigned budget resources within the level funded FY 2014 budget and was able to bring on additional inspectors and set about preparing a comprehensive budget proposal which led to a 34% increase in the eventual FY 2015 budget, which demonstrated the commitment of both the administration and Town Meeting to upgrading the funding of this budget.

We added 3.5 new full time employees. This budget reflected one of three leading priorities established by the Town Manager in the FY 2015 Budget process along with Police Department staffing and additional staff and resources for the proper maintenance and upkeep of municipal buildings.

The Director resigned in October of 2014.

I appointed the Deputy Director in the department as Interim Director in October 2014 and evaluated options to fill the position.

In January 2015, I offered him the opportunity to prove himself capable of serving as Director of Public Health, establishing a six-month probationary period during which he would be evaluated. We spoke candidly of his relative lack of experience and similarly of the lack of experience of the staff he would be supervising and leading.

In terms of moving forward during the probationary period, I made two suggestions to him at that time:
• Work more closely with the Director of Inspectional Services than the previous director had, and in so doing, gain all he possibly could from his deep experience in inspections and code enforcement; and
• That it might be helpful to find a mentor or other seasoned local government public health professional who can offer advice and suggestions. The Town’s Director of Human Resources had such a person in mind and would help make an introduction.

There were a variety of performance issues and instances of questionable judgment in the course of inspections and in customer service. I believe that these cases were a matter of inexperience and also reflected a tendency within the Health Department to work in isolation of the larger inspections and code enforcement team. The point of directing that the Health Department work more closely with the Director of Inspectional Services was to create an opportunity for the Director and the inspections staff to be coached and trained on inspections and to gain experience and to see how collaborative the relationships were between other departments. It would also address what I felt to be an opportunity to break down an artificial wall that had been erected around the Health Department and the Inspections Division and other code enforcement units.

On January 14, 2015, an inspector within the department inspected one of four apartments at a location on Maynard Road in response to a complaint of no heat. The inspector noted the use of space heaters in the absence of central heat. The inspector would subsequently encourage the placement of space heaters. The inspector noted that smoke detectors were not functional and the absence of carbon monoxide detectors. The other three apartments were not inspected.

The health inspector issued an Order to the landlord to restore the heat within 24 hours. While a copy of that Order was provided to the Fire Department, a copy was not provided to the Inspectional Services Division and no active attempt was made to reach out to either of these divisions to seek advice or assistance. Over the course of the ensuing three weeks, during some of the coldest and snowiest winter weather on record, no physical re-inspection of the apartment took place. While calls were routinely made to landlord, those calls were not returned. Calls from the tenants resulted in the suggestion of additional space heaters. No formal action was taken against the landlord. All four apartments remained occupied.

Finally on February 06, 2015, the inspector fortunately sought the advice of the Director of Inspectional Services. By the end of the day the Director of Inspection Services had inspected and condemned each of the four apartment units and had taken steps to relocate the Framingham State University students occupying three of the apartment units and a young family of four, including an infant child, occupying the fourth. Space heaters were found to be the sole source of heat in each of the four apartments and the electrical load was so high it was tripping circuit breakers.
This event could have ended very differently and tragically with profound loss of life. Individuals were put at grave risk including periods of time during any one of several major snow events when a response to a fire might have been difficult.

I issued the Interim Director a written reprimand and made the decision that until further notice, I was placing the Department of Public Health under the managerial supervision and control of the Director of Inspectional Services.

I can share this with you because the Interim Director chose to release the letter during public discussion at a meeting of the Board of Health, thereby establishing it as a public record.

Subsequent to this decision, I modified the directive to move only the Chief of Health Inspections, the four Health Inspectors/Sanitarians and the one Housing Inspector to work under the direction of the Director of Inspectional Services.

This revised directive left the Interim Director and all other community health and environmental personnel and an administrative assistant within the Health Department to continue to work on the important community health and environmental matters facing Framingham.

On March 12th, I convened a meeting of the entire staff of the Department of Public Health to explain this decision and reassured people that this would all work out. I also made it clear that their cooperation and assistance would be expected. I invited the Chairman of the Board of Health to attend that meeting and he was present.

Immediately following that staff meeting, senior management personnel, including the Interim Director and in the presence of the Chairman of the Board of Health, convened a second staff meeting in which they urged resistance and noncooperation on the part of the staff being reassigned. Specifically, staff members were urged to file as many union grievances as possible and to begin flooding the Director of Inspectional Services in-box with emails seeking direction and answers to questions. These statements are documented in an affidavit.

Based on credible sources and information made available to me, the response of senior management within the Health Department also included the initiative of a deliberate campaign to discredit the Director of Inspectional Services and myself.

In my case, there has been an allegation made that I have discriminated against an individual on the basis of ethnicity and age, an allegation which was independently reviewed by a private investigator and for which I have been completely exonerated.

This campaign continued until earlier this week and I am thankful that it appears to have abated.

I have seen a variety of documents being circulated as part of this campaign.

The inaccuracies contained in these documents are deeply troubling and indeed confirm the wisdom of my earlier decision that the Health Department needs new leadership and new direction.

In conclusion, I remain committed to completing the work I began in 2012 to improve the Department of Public Health and, importantly, to assure that it operates at the same level of team work and collaboration that we are engendering across the entire Town organization.

I am frustrated at where we are in that process, but I am committed to assuring that the public resources that have been invested in the Health Department deliver the best possible value to residents and businesses of Framingham.

I encourage you to examine the organizational chart for the department as it existed in 2012 and compare it to that which was put in place in 2015 with the benefit of a 34 percent increase in operating budget authority.

I led the effort to rebuild this department in order to see it succeed and not to tear it down as has been suggested.

I continue to desire the success of this department and one with the training and experience to match a staff that has much to offer in motivation and enthusiasm and one which embraces the values that when we work with other departments, as a team, we can ensure the public health AND safety – not merely healthy but NOT safe.