The Pine Bluff Parks and Recreation Commission voted 3-2 Tuesday to uphold a two-week suspension without pay for Saracen Landing manager Trudy Redus.
Redus appealed the suspension, which was decided by the commission’s personnel committee on May 4. The suspension is effective from May 3 to May 17.
Redus had an accident April 28 in a utility vehicle owned by the Parks Department. Her son Tre’ Redus was also on the vehicle and was injured in the accident. Trudy Redus is married to Mayor Carl A. Redus Jr.
According to a May 4 letter from Department Director Angela Parker to Redus informing her of the decision to suspend her, the reasons for the suspension were:
• Insubordination — Because Parker instructed Redus to take a drug test April 28 after the accident and it was not done
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• On the Job Safety — For the negligence (not watching the road) leading to the accident
• Absenteeism — For not communicating with Parker about the number of days she intended to take off after the accident. Parker said Redus told her she would take two to three days off and they did not speak again until Parker called her on the fourth day.
Redus responded to each of the points in Tuesday’s commission meeting:
• Insubordination — Redus said she did try to take a drug test but was told by a nurse in the emergency room at Jefferson Regional Medical Center that she needed authorization or directives from Human Resources or a supervisor and a list of the drugs for which she should be tested. Redus said she told her to test her for everything. The nurse responded that they could not do that. Redus told the nurse where she would be and left.
• On the Job Safety — “Yes , I was very negligent. I hurt my child. I hit a light post. That’s a fact. Sorry it’s newsworthy, but it is,” Redus said.
• Absenteeism — Redus said that she told Parker she would be out the whole week. She said Parker’s statement that she said she would be out for two to three days was inaccurate. She also said that because of events on the weekend, she would have taken Thursday and Friday off anyway.
Commissioner Teki Jimenez asked Redus why she did not call Parker after the nurse refused to administer the drug test to tell Parker her authorization was needed.
Redus said it was the furthest thing from her mind and she felt it was the department supervisor’s responsibility to make sure that everything to do with the drug test was set up.
“And you question about why I didn’t call to follow up, please, after I saw my child. I hadn’t thought about — I was no longer Saracen Landing manager, I was Trudy Redus, mommy. That’s it,” Redus said.
Parker said that when she talked to Redus later on Saturday afternoon that Redus told her she had already taken care of the drug test and the results would be available next week. Redus said Parker’s version of the conversation was inaccurate.
“I’m sorry,” Redus said. “That conversation never happened.”
Parker disagreed and asked how she could have misunderstood Redus to have said those two statements. Redus said she wanted to know that as well.
Jimenez asked Redus why she also called Human Resources Director Vickie Conaway about whether she needed to take the drug test after she had already been instructed to do so by Parker. Redus said she talked to Conaway for “clarification” about whether she needed to take a drug test on a vehicle with no tags. She agreed with a written account of the conversation submitted by Conaway, which ended with Conaway instructing Redus that she did need to take the drug test.
Parker has previously stated in a written report that she spoke with the JRMC nurse who spoke to Redus about the drug test. According to Parker, the nurse disagreed with Redus’ account of the conversation. Parker said the nurse said that if the staff needed authorization, they would call the agency involved and that there would not have been a conversation with the patient about what drugs the test should include.
Redus denied the nurse’s account of the conversation as reported by Parker. She also said the police report of the accident was incorrect because she was not reaching to pick up something but was rather reaching to attempt to turn off the caution lights in the vehicle when the accident occurred.
Asked by one of the commissioners, Parker said that she had tried repeatedly to get a written statement from JRMC from the nurse but they had not provided one in time for Tuesday’s meeting.
Redus said she had asked at least twice for a copy of Parker’s written report about the incident so she could respond to its content and had not gotten it before the meeting. Parker attributed the problem to an incorrect email address and a miscommunication between herself and Jimenez.
According to the city’s drug and alcohol policy manual, which was passed out by Parker to the press and the personnel committee members on May 4, an employee who fails to report to testing immediately after being told to do so “will be terminated” because the “city of Pine Bluff has adopted a policy of zero tolerance.”
Parker on May 9 provided the commissioners with a written statement responding to Redus’ account of the events. In it, she explains why she asked the personnel committee to make the decision in the case rather than making the decision alone, as it was in her power to do.
“I called and set up a meeting with the personnel committee after I had gotten all of my paperwork together because of the conflict of interest that I expressed from the moment Trudy was hired [by the commission] I feared would come from her employment,” Parker stated. “The mayor does not have the power to hire or fire me, but he does appoint my commissioners. He also has a say so in funding to Parks and Recreation.
“My recommendation to the personnel committee was for termination. I feel that this suspension for this particular incident gives me no power to do anything in the future to any employees who fail, refuse, whatever the case may be as pertaining to a drug test or completely misrepresenting the truth to do nothing but suspend them without pay.”
Commissioners Jimenez and Kami Hunt voted against the decision. Hunt said after the meeting she voted against the motion because she “just didn’t agree” and didn’t feel like she had enough information. Jimenez is chairman and would not normally cast a vote, but said after the meeting that she did so as a matter of record. Jimenez said she voted against the decision because she “just didn’t agree.
“I didn’t want to set a bad precedence,” Jimenez said.
The commission took questions from the audience of about a dozen people after the vote. They were asked why they did not adhere to the city zero tolerance policy.
Jimenez said that city policy is different from the commission policy. Former alderman Jack Foster said that because the commission has no policy of its own, they should have followed the city policy and that by not doing so, they were setting a bad precedence. Jimenez disagreed.
In a previous article, Assistant City Attorney Joe Childers said that the commission does not have a drug testing policy of its own, but has used the city drug testing policy in the past as its de facto policy. Parker said after the meeting Tuesday that was still the advice she had gotten from the city attorney’s office on the day of the meeting.
Jimenez was asked after the meeting if she had gotten some alternative legal advice that caused her to disregard the city attorney’s office view of the matter. Jimenez said that if parks employees are expected to abide by the city drug testing handbook, then they should get a copy of it when they are hired.
Jimenez was a member of the two-person personnel committee who originally recommended the two-week suspension. She said she found out after making that decision that Trudy Redus and other employees were not given a copy of the drug testing policy. Jimenez said it was Parker’s responsibility to give people copies of a policy they were expected follow. She declined to go into more detail about what changed her mind, but said it was unfortunate that the good things Redus had done during her time on the job were being overshadowed by the accident.
In response to a question from the public, Commissioner Jeffrey Pulliam said the situation had been unique because of many of the circumstances involved. He said it had been traumatic and that “we should remember that we are all human.” He said that Redus did not refuse to take the drug test, but tried to and was prevented from doing so.
“It’s not a matter of who Mrs. Redus is married to,” Pulliam said. “It’s a fair decision.”
Commissioner Abel White said that if the commission’s policies had been stronger from the beginning, there would not have been so many problems associated with the situation.
The commission did choose to change one thing about the personnel committee’s recommendation, which included a one-year probation period for Redus during which she could be fired by Parker if there were further accidents or incidents. Pulliam and Jimenez said they decided to drop the probation period because in an at-will employment state like Arkansas, it is already up to Parker’s discretion to fire Redus, so the probation period was redundant and unnecessary.
Separate from the decision about Redus’ appeal, the commission voted unanimously at Jimenez’s suggestion to formally adopt the city’s drug-free workplace policy manual as its own. They decided to draft policies for consideration at a future commission meeting on who can ride in department vehicles and how employee training for the various department vehicles should be conducted.
The vehicle, a Toro Workman MDX, was one of several new vehicles the department purchased with funds from the city tax increase approved by voters in February 2011. According to the bid sheet from August 2011 on the vehicle, it cost $10,430.
According to a police report, it sustained damage that appeared to include a bent front axle and a broken brush guard. A quote by the company that sold the department the vehicle estimated the cost of repair at $4,042. Because the amount exceeds a certain threshold, the department will be required to solicit bids for the repair work, so the actual final cost may differ.
Redus was hired as Saracen Landing manager in September 2010.