Statement from Mayor Lloyd Winnecke re: Sherman Greer Resignation
“Today, Sherman Greer submitted his resignation after 23 years with the City of Evansville – Vanderburgh County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) as Director. The resignation is effective immediately. We appreciate his service and wish him well on his next endeavor. During this time of transition, Deputy Director Adam Groupe will serve as the interim Director. The City of Evansville and Vanderburgh County will begin an immediate search to identify the next Director of the EMA who will continue to ensure our community is prepared for any type of emergency situation.
Sherman was asked to resign after a review of purchasing and personnel records that uncovered disturbing practices.
Through his own admission of ‘neglect,’ and with his knowledge, an EMA employee was allowed to accrue a large amount of compensable time without justification that resulted in a large financial liability for the City in direct violation of city policy and procedures. Also, the EMA purchased and took possession of a new truck by using monies designated for a different expenditure.â€
Lloyd Winnecke, Mayor
City of Evansville
Mayor McClintock. You crack me up. You haven’t reconciled in 2 1/2 years and no one can make sense of your records, yet you waste your time picking on a very good Civil Servant? I hope that the State Board crucifies you and Rumplebeancounter this year!
Watch the Reverend Al Sharpton come to town and make this a race issue
Sherman would reject Sharpton’s racist help.
I agree! Sherman is a very respectable and well-liked man!
He is also a thief and he let down a lot of people by his actions.
I hope this dude sues the crap out of Winnecke just like Marylee Fowler did when Weinzapfel inserted politics to fire her at the CVB. Weinzapfel’s meddling cost the CVB about $40,000 with that little stunt.
You crack me up! Greer admits to the Mayor that he was aware of the time sheet abuse by one of his employees and he did nothing about it- except of course recommend the same employee for a “large salary increase”. He also bought a truck that wasn’t in his department’s budget.
Seems to my the city should sue Greer for incompetence and mismanagement!
Mr mayor
Ya need to fire Jenny Collins and Russ Lloyd jr
They are the screw ups
Derp
Amen! Haven’t reconciled in 30 months. The State Board came in last year and threw in the towel because it was horrible. Time for Jenny Collins to go and Rumplebeancounter too!
Not the first time Winnecke got rid of an outstanding public servant. Just ask Joe Wallace.
Can’t wait till the public gets rid of the Mayor two face a–.
Oh, he fired the wrong people. It should had been Ms. Collins and Russ Lloyd,, Jr.
We enjoyed working with Sherman Greer because is was an extremely knowledgeable and professional person.
We missed him.
I too hope he sues the Mayor for wrongful dismissal. I hope race doesn’t become an issue in Mr. Greer’s firing.
No way was it race related. Have you seen who was brought in by him?
“outstanding public servant”????! Did you read WHY Mr. Greer was forced to resign? After 23 years heading a city department, the man can’t read his own budget! Worse yet he protected and attempted to reward an employee he knew was abusing the city’s personnel policies.
Be thankful such an inept, incompetent “public servant” was given the option to retire with full benefits rather than being fired and then prosecuted for fraud and corruption!
Per Marsha Abell:
Winnecke informed Commission President Marsha Abell this morning about Greer’s resignation, she said.
“I just got a (text) message this morning from the mayor that Sherman had tendered his resignation,†said Abell.
Per Eric Williams:
Sheriff Eric Williams, who was appointed to the advisory council by County Commissioners, said he knew about the resignation, but that it wasn’t his place to talk about it.
“I was brought up to speed on it at the end of last week, so I was aware that it was forthcoming. I talked to the mayor about it, and he’s doing what he thinks is best. I think he also cleared it with the commissioners, but you probably need to talk to him.”
So are we to believe that the President of the Vanderburgh County Commissioners, one of the highest ranking officials in the COUNTY, only found this morning via a text message that a COUNTY Director level position was being terminated (ahem…….requested resignation) without ANY discussion? That the Mayor would tell the Sheriff last week, but President Abell did not get notified until today that such a HUGE position would be terminated via request?
Like they said on the Brady Bunch….Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!
Mayor Winnecke knows what he is doing.
Connie Robinson – do you see what you did?
It’s your fault Connie. You supported this idiot mayor in public and he’s done nothing but wreck the city.
A minority department head has now lost his job because of you.
Shame shame shame.
Oh. And Winnecke also CLOSED the dental clinic after trumpeting its success running for mayor. You let him use you and now who is looking bad. BOTH OF YOU.
Connie’s fault???—give me a break. It is Sherman Greer’s fault! He let down his department and the minority community big time. Sad.
“a minority department head”???! What does Greer’s race have to do with anything??? If he didn’t do his job – and he admitted exactly that – he should have been fired.
Please we don’t need you waving the race card over admitted incompetence!
It is refreshing to see proper action was taken when strict known rules were broken by a city employee. Sherman has no one to blame but himself.
Hey look. It’s the Mayor’s flunkie, Steve Schaffer. This guy graduated from IU with a political science degree but couldn’t get into law school. Too busy hitting all the buffets from Evansville to Bloomington I guess.
now would be a good time to review the whole EMA system that was set up in haste under Frank Jr to capture a federal funding source and effectively turned the responsibility of the city and county civil defense over to a board made up of unelected safety professionals who are the peer group of the director…. the Mayor can not fire the director, only the board can do that…. Sherman’s resignation creates the perfect opportunity to revisit the issue of who is responsible for our defense…. elected officials or non-elected career professionals
Oh–So you think the answer to this issue is more Federal Government. I do not.
Do you think it is OK for Sherman and the other employee to effectively steal money from the taxpayers by intentionally turning in lies on the time sheet. I do not.
Do you think it is OK for Sherman to intentionally misappropriate money and spend it. I do not.
Something is badly wrong with your thinking. Sherman has no one to blame but himself. Quit trying to defend him. He is lucky he is not facing serious criminal charges.
Don’t the County Commissioners have something to say about the dismissal of Mr. Greer?
Oh, I forget that Marsha and Lloyd are the best of personal friends.
Looks like another Abell and Winnecke back room political deal.
I’m sorry to see another outstanding public servant get the political shaft.
Winnecke and Abell has to go!
There is nothing outstanding about Sherman. He intentionally stole money from the taxpayer. If you really believe this is oustanding service, I suggest you get some professional help.
I hate to burst your bubble. He did not intentionally steal taxpayer money. The truck was approved by Mayor Winnecke, Finance, Purchasing and the Advisory Committee. So where are their resignations? He could not have got the truck without a PO from Purchasing. Everyone that I mentioned approved it because his assigned trucks transmission was going out. Mr. Greer has many meeting he has to attend over a 12 county region. Along with numerous trips to Indy. I guess he could have started renting vehicles to make these trips! Then you would call him a thief because of that.
Concerning the overtime wages, why did not Payroll catch this a long time ago? As I understand the City’s time clock, is done on the computer. So, how was this employee able to, as they are saying, cheat the system! That is why they use a computer. So the computer can kick out problems like this. So who in payroll is handing in their resignation? The MUNIS system should have caught this a long time ago. But Payroll ALLOWED this OT to continue to increase to an amount that it cost a good man his job.
I believe that we need to call for an investigation into the Mayor’s resignation request to see if charges can be applied to the Mayor and his staff. FOLLOW THE PAPER TRAIL!!!
It wasn’t Payroll primary job to “catch” intention fraud going on in Mr. Greer’s department. It not a computer’s fault for not “catching” Arnold.
It was Greer’s responsibility. He’s the department head. He’s the one that “approves” his employee’s time sheets – all 3 of them. He openly admitted that he was aware of Arnold’s abuse and did nothing about it – read the article!
Stop making excuses for a man who aided and abetted the violation of city policy in his own small department.
Remember the Homestead Tax Credit and Tom Barnett-Gage salary issues that the Mayor was involved in?
Should we trust him also?
Let’s retire this two face political person in the next election.
Steve Melcher for Mayor.
Get ready for real political fallout on this one. First responders are really pi–ed off about the forced firing of Sherman Greer.
Didn’t the Mayor waste $200,000 of taxpayers money on the Earthcare deal last year?
By his standards he should also fire himself.
What an idiot.
He just not up to the task of being Mayor of our fair city.
The Mayors response will be Derp,Derp and more Derp!!!!!!!!
What does “Derp” mean?
Derp is an expression associated with stupidity, much like the earlier forms of interjections like “duh†and “dur.†In image macros, the subject is typically portrayed with eyes that are pointed to each side and a caption that reads “DERP.†The words “herp†and “derp†are often used in rage comics to replace nondescript names or parts of conversation.
From Urban Dictionary: DeRp = DEmocrat + RePublican acronym
Your common DeRp wants government spending and lots of it. DeRps don’t care if they have to borrow it’s only important that all of their choice interest groups (hobbies) are fed at the end of the day. The only difference between the DNC and the GOP is what the spending goes toward. They’re consumers just like generation x women and no one takes their men seriously. The generation x women wear the pants in the DeRp house and they represent the marginal power of the DeRp vote.
The person who calls himself WOW fits the description of DERP very well. “One who, in an argument, takes a position, and when that position is destroyed by evidence and well-reasoned argument, acts as if the reasoned argument never happened, instead sticking to his original position while resorting to logical fallacies such as bad math, unwarranted assumptions, appeals to emotion, wishful thinking, false and deliberately misleading data and analysis, or ad-hominem attacks on his opponents. One who argues in bad faith.”
Dah! It ain’t about the Mayor. It’s about violating city policy and the admitted incompetency in managing EMA and it’s employees!
You are not up to making a critiable comment on the Sherman Greer matter. What he intentially did was flat wrong.
Tub,
Remedial Spelling class at Ivy Tech this morning at 9:00 AM, be there !
I missed it–is there one tomorrow? 🙂
Yes, but tomorrow’s session will be at Lockyear Business College downtown. Starts at 11:30 AM, free beer and lunch !
“King Winnecke The Despicable”.
One Term Creep.
Excerpt from CourierPress story:
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/jul/15/local-ema-director-sherman-greer-resigns-post/?comments_id=1375425
“(Winnecke) said, ‘I have to have people in my administration that I can trust and I just don’t trust you,’â€
Mayor Winnecke
Did you organize and were you present at the secret meeting, wherein the decision was made to secretly fail to file for the 2009 Homestead Tax Exemption? Did you remain silent about this for over a year?
Do you believe that it was your responsibility to inform residents about significant increases in their Property Taxes, or don’t you?
IMHO
Mayor Winnecke, it’s the people’s administration and we need people that we can trust and I just don’t trust you. …
_____
LOCAL HOMESTEAD TAX CREDIT BACK ON IN 2010
By Thomas B. Langhorne
Posted July 13, 2009 at 7:23 p.m.
“Mixing in warnings that the public does not support the planned Downtown arena and annexation plans, the speakers zeroed in on an unadvertised April 1, 2008, meeting in Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel’s office at which city and county officials decided not to renew the 2009 local homestead credit.
Because none of the officials disclosed the decision afterward, the roughly 46,000 residents to whom the homestead credit spelled out more than $5.1 million in tax relief last year did not realize it had been discontinued until they saw the spring installment of this year’s property tax bills.”
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009…
Consider the position Greer was in. Emergency management agency/director of emergency services. Maybe they are planning something horrific and they knew Greer would not go along. What and see who takes his place.
renegad –If you are not kidding, you need to re-new whatever you are smoking.
My first thought when seeing this story was that Winnecke had finally done something I thought made sense. Firing the head of a Dept that wasn’t acting on the up and up is completely understandable. I think if I were Mayor, knowing only what I know,I might have done the same.
The problem with Winnecke, as the CCO has aptly point out, is he is penny-wise and pound-stupid.
The Mayor needs to get some credit when he makes the right decision. He will become wiser.
I do think this was an important decision for a host of reasons.
Greer for County Commisioner in 2015!
That’s right – let’s all support a man who after 23 years on the job can’t read his own budget and can’t manage a couple of employees in a very small office. Let’s all get behind the man who admits he knew his employee was abusing the city’s overtime policy and did nothing about it. Right! This is just the kind of person we need in a County-wide office!
Funny while making very good points–well done.
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