VA City Official, FF Clash over Staffing in Fiery Emails

What began as an effort to open a discussion concerning a Virginia fire department's staff funding turned into a fiery and contentious email exchange between a city official and the head of the firefighters union last week.

On Tuesday, Charlottesville firefighter and union president Greg Wright sent a message to the city council's general email account to talk with Chief Andrew Baxter, City Manager Tarron Richardson and other officials concerning the department funding, The Daily Progress reports. A proposed  $196.6 million budget for the 2021 fiscal year makes no allotment for new hires despite a departmental push for $1.3 million to pay for 12 additional firefighters to staff ambulances.

Although firefighters have argued that the department is understaffed, Richardson has publicly disagreed with that assessment. He has contended that Baxter needs to do a better job managing the funds available to the department.

In his message to the council's general email account, Wright said the department has tried to clearly explain to Richardson the staffing and deployment issues firefighters currently face, according to the Progress. He called Richardson "willfully ignorant" to those concerns and questioned the city official's understanding of the budget process, alluding to Richardson incorrectly stating the 2020 pay raises for public safety employees while presenting the proposed budget last week.

Responding from the general email account, Richardson challenged Wright's own qualifications when it came to city budget issues, according to the Progress. He added that Wright, who has been with the department since 2011, couldn't request 2-2-1 meetings, even though nothing prohibits city employees or residents from asking for such meetings that include one or two elected officials in order to avoid public meeting requirements.

“You are a firefighter who oversees a limited number of employees on a daily basis. Your educational achievements and certifications, as well as your limited work experience as a supervisor will never be a match to any of my qualifications or credentials,” Richardson, who has a doctorate degree, wrote, according to the Progress. “So, let’s be clear about who is ignorant and overwhelmingly shallow as a professional in the field of public administration.”

“Then, one day we can have an intelligent conversation about budgets and personnel management in local government,” he added.

While he called his language toward Richardson "direct," Wright told the Progress in an interview Thursday that he stood behind the content of his message and that the department's staffing issues have had an effect on morale. However, he was says he was "taken aback" by the city manager's reply.

“We’re a highly educated group of employees who have the training and advanced certificates that allow us to administer drugs in emergency settings, to perform advanced cardiac care procedures and operate a million-dollar ladder truck in an emergency situation," Wright told the Progress. "We clearly are not illiterate or uneducated. He was willing to put his response in black-and-white and share it. I can’t imagine what he’s saying when there’s no record of it.”

Richardson was not backing down from his comments, either.

“I’m not going to stand for someone calling me ignorant,” Richardson told the Progress. “As a black man, I feel like if I don’t say anything, I don’t correct him, that he will say it to another person of color.”