A deal between Mayor Paul Dyster and the City Council will allow two of three inspectors tied to an FBI investigation to return to work on a limited basis later this week.
Under an agreement reached on Monday, Dyster will offer Chief Plumbing Inspector George Amendola and Electrical Inspector Peter Butry the opportunity to come back to their jobs under a set of restrictions.
In exchange, the council agreed to comply with Dyster’s request to provide the code enforcement department with enough funding to add two more temporary inspectors.
“The council was only willing to agree to the hiring if I was willing to bring these two individuals back on some basis,” Dyster said. “I would have preferred to have done it a different way, but this was necessary in order to get the council’s support.”
Amendola, Butry and Building Inspector Guy Bax were placed on paid administrative leave in July after they were named in a federal search warrant application that is tied to an ongoing investigation of local plumbing contractor John Gross Jr. Charges have yet to be filed in the case. For weeks, Dyster refused lawmakers’ requests to allow the three inspectors to return to duty pending the outcome of the investigation. His stance softened last week amid concerns about the ability of the code enforcement department to perform inspections with a short staff and limited budget.
Council members have argued that it would be a waste of taxpayer money to hire temporary workers to perform inspections while three qualified employees are receiving paychecks for jobs they aren’t being allowed to do.
Council Chairman Sam Fruscione said he believes Bax deserves an opportunity to come back as well but the council considered the mayor’s offer an acceptable compromise at this point.
“We will no longer be paying people to stay home,” Fruscione said.
Amendola and Butry could be back on the job as early as Wednesday but city officials confirmed that both men have accrued vacation time that may allow them to return to their positions without immediately returning to work at City Hall.
In their absence, the city has performed inspections on a case-by-case basis using outside inspectors hired with funds from an emergency account within the code enforcement budget. Those dollars were rapidly dwindling, prompting the mayor’s request for additional help.
On Monday, the council agreed to transfer $35,000 into code enforcement to cover costs related to the temporary inspectors. Chief Code Enforcement Officer Dennis Virtuoso said the funding should be enough to maintain an adequate level of inspections services through April.
Virtuoso said once Amendola and Butry return, they will be limited to plan reviews, permit processing and other administrative duties inside City Hall. He said the two temporary inspectors will be responsible for dealing with contractors and visiting job sites.
“(Amendola and Butry) will be doing the administrative end of it,” he said. “The temporary inspectors will be out in the field doing the inspections.”
Dyster said the administration will continue to monitor the situation closely.
“They are not going to go out into the field to do inspections to avoid putting them into a position where there might be the appearance of a conflict,” Dyster said.
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