Doug Erwin Legal Archives

Mr. Erwin walked into a trap when he took the job over Director of Maintenance. Things were obviously out of control and had been that way for a long time. Why the ROSSAC Mayberry Machiavellis wanted Erwin to manage this outrage is a mystery so far--unless they wanted to set him up to be fired.

It seems the board members just wandered around and managed the college.

I spent three hours with the Erwin legal archives on Tuesday. I will return until I master the information. Recall that I have spent most of my life in academics, and this is the kind of stuff academics do. It's called research.

What I have read so far makes me wish we had just one ethical, brave person on the board. We don't have such a person yet. You can have all the information in the world, but if somebody won't speak up and act on it, the information does no good. lee

This is a response to a number of work related situations that have occurred or that I have become aware of during my tenure as Director of Maintenance and General Director of Operations.

Before accepting the position of Director of Maintenance I had served as a high school principal for Hillsborough County Public Schools. I was very hesitant to accept the position of Director of Maintenance because of knowledge of some long-term problems within the maintenance department (see attachment 1).

Dr. Paul Edwards, Assistant Superintendent of Operations at the time, called me twice to offer the position and I declined twice. Dr. Edwards then made a third request and said that the position would be upgraded to a General Director’s position if I would accept the position and I accepted.

I discovered many unacceptable business practices after taking the Director of Maintenance position.

• Maintenance employees were allowed to leave before the end of the scheduled day on a regular basis.
• There was massive abuse of lunch and break times.
• There was serious abuse of overtime (cx. sixteen employees were being paid for 12 hour days to do 5 hour jobs).
• There was also serious abuse of compensatory time.
• A district level form had been altered giving all employees free access to tools and equipment for personal use on other jobs.
• Many maintenance employees were allowed to purchase materials and supplies from hundreds of blanket purchase orders established with businesses throughout Hillsborough County.
• There was excessive contracting for services that maintenance employees should have been performing.
• There was an extremely long list of items missing from inventory.
• Most vehicles and maintenance equipment was in poor and often unsafe condition.
• Many schools had serious maintenance problems that were not being resolved in a timely manner.
• There were long-term problems in many schools with water intrusion and air conditioning problems which were causing air quality problems.
• No portables in the district met state safety standards.
• Schools that had been built in the 1990’s often had the most serious problems.

I made Dr. Edwards aware of each problem that I had become aware of. Dr. Edwards retired before corrective measures were taken. Dr. Hamilton then took that position (January 1998) and
I shared with hint my concerns. Dr. Hamilton then directed me to develop a plan including corrective measures (see attachment 2). The plan was approved and implemented as much as possible (some improvement was shown).

The source of my frustration has been the obstacles that I have encountered in attempting to carry out this plan and improve the division. Action was often stopped when I was told by the Assistant Superintendent ‘what I should or should not do based upon an employee connection with one or more board members or based upon what an employee might know that could be embarrassing to the district, or to be overly cautious because of sensitivity to public knowledge.

Mr. Newsome and Mr. Rampello got involved in some maintenance personnel issues without having all of the facts needed to determine an appropriate action or outcome. Their involvement caused tremendous difficulties in getting needed support in dealing with these personnel and being able to take proper action. Prior to Mr. Rampello’s and Mr. Newsome’s involvement good progress was being made in the maintenance division (see attachment 3). From that time on, I have had to spend unnecessary time defending myself and my actions (see attachment 4).

Mr. Newsome called me and said that he was meeting with employees from Maintenance West and Maintenance East. He did not ask for input from me nor was I invited to attend the meeting. He also spoke with maintenance managers, David Busciglio, Richard Parrish, and Roosevelt Lawrence. Mr. Newsome told me of those meeting after the fact. Mr. Newsome stated that each manager had very negative comments about me with Roosevelt Lawrence being the most critical.

He also stated that David Busciglio was the least critical. I spoke to each manager and asked what concerns each hail that had been voiced to Mr. Newsome. Mr. Lawrence said that he had made no negative comments and in lict, said that Mr. Newsome was lying. He said that he did not know Mr. Newsome and was not going to be caught up saying negative things to him. David Busciglio said that he did have concerns and that he did make negative comments to Mr. Newsome and that the other two had lied to me and “did not have the balls to tell the truth”. However, Richard Parrish said that Mr. Newsome was not truthfid with me about the meeting. At a later time Mr. Parish came to my office and said that he wanted to share the truth with me about what Mr. Newsome had told him during that meeting.

“As God is my witness, Joe Newsome told me that we needed to work together to get Doug Erwin out of the school system. it is time for him to retire.”

I met with Mr. Rampello at Mr. Newsome’s request. Mr. Rampello stated that Mr. Buscigio (David) was his cousin and that the Hispanic maintenance workers relied on him (Mr. Rampello) to resolve problems if they arose. He stated that he heard that I had verbally and physically abused employees. I informed Mr. Rampello that he had gotten involved in the situation without talking to me and that the accusations were totally false.

I followed all procedures in trying to get Mr. Busciglio to perform his duties as manager of Maintenance West. I did not receive from him the cooperation that I asked for in making appropriate changes needed to make Maintenance West more efficient. On his evaluation I marked “needs improvement” and told Mr. Buscigilo that he would be given an “unsatisfactory” evaluation and put on career observation if his work performance did not improve.

Mr. Busciglio did not improve his work performance and I did the paper work to place him on career observation. Dr. Hamilton intervened and requested that I give Mr. Busciglio a “good” evaluation. Dr. Hamilton said that he would solve the problem by making sure that Mr. Busciglio performed up to Dr. Hamilton’s expectations (which were the same as mine).

I did as Dr. Hamilton asked at that time. Mr. Busciglio still did not improve his work performance and documentation was provided to show that he was not meeting our expectations or requirements. Disciplinary action was not taken and Mr. Buscigio ended up being transferred to another job that he was not qualified to do and received equal pay. Mr. Busciglio also wrote what I consider to be a very slanderous letter to the superintendent (see attachment 5).

Douglas A Erwin