ELYRIA — The Elyria Fire Department was not allowed to speak the first time the McGrath Consulting Group was in town to deliver a presentation on its 331-page fire management study.
That will not be the case Wednesday, when the team of Tim and Victoria McGrath return to Elyria for a question and answer session with city leaders and fire officials. The 6 p.m. meeting in City Council Chambers will be broadcast live on the Chronicle’s Web site.
Dean Marks, president of the local firefighters union, said he will speak and hopefully set the record straight on the inaccuracies in the report.
“All we are trying to do is get actual facts out there,” Marks said. “We are excited about that so people can make an informed decision based on all the facts.”
When a final copy of the audit was released in mid-July, it was Marks who quickly found the most-talked-about error — the average number of days an average firefighter works. The initial report said the number was incredibly low, but after Marks brought the error to the attention of Victoria McGrath, a principal member of the consulting group and one of the lead consultants that worked on Elyria’s report, a revised study was released days later just in time for the July 22 public meeting.
Since then, Marks said he has gone though the report several times and has found numerous errors.
A letter sent to Mayor Bill Grace by Marks on Aug. 31 detailed some of the errors Marks said he found in the report.
Accompanying the letter was 60 pages of information and data Marks said will correct many of the major errors in the report.
“I believe that without a complete re-evaluation of the report and all the data provided, the creditability of the entire report must be called into question,” Marks said in the letter. “I believe that the citizens have a right to know the accurate facts.”
Marks questions the McGrath group’s claims about not only the days worked figure, but also sick-time usage in the department, the claim the union contract is rich with lucrative benefits and the department’s response times.
When asked if he agreed with the claims Marks made about errors in the report, Grace said he is not the person to defend it.
“Part of the purpose of this meeting is to get everyone together — fire officials, city officials, the McGrath Group and the public — so things can be discussed in terms of accuracy, clarity and philosophy and I’m sure everything will be addressed by the consultant either on the spot, the next day or soon after,” he said.
Still, Grace said the choice of the McGrath Consultant Group to perform the Fire Department audit was a unanimous one of the audit selection committee, which consisted of firefighters, city administrators and City Council members.
Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.
