Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Superintendent Greg Brown and the city's athletic program manager are disciplined in a case involving drinking after ballgames at a park.
By MICHAEL SANDLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 4, 2002
LARGO -- The city's parks superintendent has been suspended for a week without pay for allowing city employees to drink alcohol on parks grounds during the course of six weeks.
Greg Brown, the highest-ranking manager in the department, admitted allowing a softball team he played on to drink beer in the parking lot after games in a city-sponsored league at the Whitesell Park.
The employees were off duty, but the city bans drinking at all parks.
Bill Conway, the city's athletic program manager and the direct supervisor of the softball league, also was suspended for one week. Both suspensions began Monday.
"I was a senior manager, and I should have made the call to tell them not to," Brown said. "I'm a nondrinker. I saw it, and I should have taken action."
The discipline was handed down Friday, two weeks after Brown was cleared in an unrelated investigation that alleged he looked the other way while one of his employees repeatedly made racially and sexually disparaging remarks.
City officials said they were tipped off about the drinking incidents by a city employee who read the report detailing the harassment investigation.
Brown's supervision of horticultural supervisor Gary McNichols was called into question after another employee reported that McNichols often used the word "n-----" at work.
Brown, 33, an employee since 1997, said Monday that his suspension has nothing to do with the harassment investigation.
"The two really don't seem linked to me," said Brown. "As soon as I knew it (harassment) was going on, I felt the employee needed to be terminated."
Johny Pollack, a foreman in the department who is black, first complained about McNichols' behavior to Brown and Cathy Santa, Largo's recreation, parks and arts director, on Feb. 13.
Within about two weeks, Brown forced McNichols to resign. But Pollack alleged that Brown and foreman Terence Wojdan subsequently harassed him.
Pollack's allegation prompted the investigation that ultimately cleared Brown. Wojdan received a letter of reprimand.
The investigation also concluded at least 10 other employees noticed McNichols' insensitive remarks. They said he posted sexually explicit jokes on the same bulletin board Brown used for posting announcements.
"It is difficult to believe you never heard it," Santa wrote in an e-mail to Brown on May 20, just before she left for vacation. "But if you did not you must reinforce to your staff to make you aware immediately of any harassment situation occurring in the parks division."
Santa said Brown, Wojdan and McNichols all played together on the softball team.
An employee who read the investigation report told City Manager Steven Stanton that some of the comments made were done so after work at a softball game where employees drank, Stanton said.
-- Michael Sandler can be reached at sandler@sptimes.com.