Beacon Paid $50,452 To Willing and Able Highway Department Employee To Not Work

In 2021, the City of Beacon paid $50,452 of admin leave to Reuben Simmons, an employee with the Highway Department who is of mixed race and identifies as Black. ALBB has confirmed this amount with Reuben when we asked if he would make public his payments from the city for 2021. This is as per union rules as Reuben understands them, when an employee is presented with a discipline, the City can give up to 30 days suspension without pay, after which the employee is placed back on payroll while the process continues. Reuben has been served with 2 disciplines totaling 60 days over a course of at least 8 hearings with the City and their attorneys.

Reuben has worked for the City of Beacon in the Highway Department since 2002, where he started in the Summer Help position. He worked his way up to Laborer, then Maintenance Worker. During that time, he was appointed Union President for the City of Beacon CSEA Local 814 Unit 6662.

In 2017, Reuben was appointed Highway Superintendent, the lead position in that department, by then Mayor Randy Casale, with the support of then City Administrator, Anthony Ruggiero. In 2018, Dutchess County reached out to the City of Beacon to let the City know that the job title was incorrect, and that Superintendent of Streets was the proper title, but required a different Civil Service exam to qualify for the position. Fellow employee Michael “Micki” Manzi qualified for the test, and replaced Reuben as Superintendent of Streets. All of the people mentioned here except Reuben are white. To this day, the job title is stated on the City of Beacon’s website as Highway Superintendent.

During this transition under the management of then City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero, Reuben was not given the opportunity to take the required Civil Service exam in order to accept or maintain his job position of Highway Superintendent. Extending this opportunity to someone in an existing role is not unheard of in the City of Beacon. Listen to Reuben tell it in his own words on the “Wait, What Is That?” podcast.

For example: at the 5/17/2021 City Council Meeting, current City Administrator Chris White announced that longtime Water Department employee Ed Balicki, who is white, would become Superintendent of Water and Sewers. “We are moving Ed to the proper title,” explained City Administrator White to the City Council at that meeting. “Ed will have to take a Civil Service Exam…We don't think there will be any issue.” Ed passed the exam, and was re-titled.

In Reuben’s case, he was stripped of his title, and demoted back down to Maintenance Worker, then promoted to Working Supervisor, and demoted to Maintenance Worker within a 2 year period. During the first week of January 2021, he was placed on his first round of unpaid leave, and the order of City Administrator Chris, accompanied by a stack of charges against him signed by City Administrator Chris, which ALBB did see documentation of. These charges amounted to lists of generalities of what intersections Reuben was accused of not doing work, returning late from lunch, and an auto accident that Reuben reported to his supervisor Michael Manzi by way of announcing it on the Highway Department radio, and again in a later discussion, according to Reuben.

Auto accidents are not uncommon in the Highway Department, or other departments within the City of Beacon where vehicles are driving by city employees. What is not disclosed by the City of Beacon is when these auto accidents happen, and if they are reported. For example, the public is not informed of when the new Highway Garage gets a dent in a garage door,, for instance, or if an employee did get into a fender bender, and if that incident got reported or not. Additionally, the public is not regularly informed when an employee resigns or is fired, but the public is informed of each new hire when that employee is presented to the City Council the night of a vote to hire them.

Recently, two employees of the administration resigned, which were announced during City Council Meetings: Beacon’s first HR Director, Gina Basile, who left after a year and seven months on the job, according to her LinkedIn, and the Mayor’s Assistant, Collin Milone.

Gina was tasked with reviewing the Highway Department’s work atmosphere, and found it to be troubled: “Beacon’s New HR Director Hears From City Employees About Discrimination, Inequality, Growing Tensions; Suggests Solutions; Begins With Highway Department.”

Shortly thereafter, a Diversity and Inclusions Statement was presented and passed in the City of Beacon, when then City Councilmember Air Nonken Rhodes stated: “This isn’t lip service.”

The City of Beacon has hosted at least 8 hearings against Reuben in 2021, which involve the city’s labor attorney and an arbitrator. During the 8th meeting, the City of Beacon actively closed the meeting to the media, by requesting that ALBB leave the call (ALBB was sent an invite to the hearing via Zoom by the arbitrator at Reuben’s request). The city attorney stated that the meeting was closed, and that Reuben had wanted it closed. Reuben denied that, stating that he wanted the hearings open to the public from the beginning, and then stated it again in an article on ALBB.

During this time, In 2021 alone, the City of Beacon under the direction of City Administrator Chris has made two transfers to cover unplanned costs from unrelated areas of the budget to another area of the budget called “Employee Discipline,” bringing that unbudgeted total to over $110,000.

Reuben was put on unpaid leave in January 2021 for a 30 day period, followed by a second 30 day unpaid leave period for disciplinary reasons. The City of Beacon has not made public what those disciplinary reasons are (though ALBB has seen the first stack of the vague charges), or why they have spent so much money for a willing and able Highway Department employee to not work for over a year, during a national labor shortage. During the summer of 2021, the City of Beacon could not completely fill the 6 Summer Jobs it seasonally fills to fill its department.