GREENWOOD TWP- The Greenwood Town Board voted 3-2 at a special meeting on Oct. 30 to hire an attorney to investigate allegations made by Tower Ambulance/Fire Department member Steve Freshour, and two other members of the department, against Greenwood Fire Chief and First Responder Jeff Maus.
Lois Roskoski, Paul Skubic, and Craig Gilbert voted in favor, and John Bassing and Rick Stoehr voted against the motion. This meeting was initially posted as a closed meeting, but was opened at the request of Jeff Maus, which is his right in accordance with the Open Meeting Law.
The township is hiring Pam Whitmore of the law firm Kennedy and Graven, a large Minneapolis law firm that practices primarily in local government law. Whitmore has over 20 years of experience in the areas of local government law, municipal litigation and conflict management services. She was recommended by the township attorney Mike Couri and will be charging the township a rate of $250 per hour. Roskoski said the attorney would most likely be working remotely and conducting interviews through Zoom. No timeline was offered for the investigation, although Roskoski estimated it could take two months to complete.
The town board had met earlier that afternoon, in a closed meeting, to discuss ongoing litigation between Fire Chief Jeff Maus and the township regarding two complaints made to the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry (MDLI) which have not been resolved at this point. No action was taken on that matter.
The Freshour allegations were included in a handwritten 16-page letter, dated Oct. 22, which detailed ten incidents involving both emergency medical and fire calls dating back to 2023, where Freshour felt Maus had not acted professionally on emergency scenes, and not provided an adequate level of care.
“I am bringing these issues to your attention because I am not seeing an improvement or positive changes on calls made to our area by Greenwood personnel, and hope by bringing this forward to see a change for better outcomes,” wrote Freshour.
These complaints did not come from the city of Tower, according to city clerk/treasurer Michael Schultz, but personally from city employees without permission from nor knowledge of the city.
Maus was clearly surprised by the complaints, which he only learned of from the township attorney a day before the meeting.
“I must vehemently complain about this hearing,” Maus told the board, sitting in the audience during the meeting. “I was not given adequate time to prepare a defense against what could be very serious charges,” he said. “I was given less than a day’s notice.”
Maus told the board he had since asked, several times, that this meeting be postponed to allow him to bring evidence that would support his defense. He added that an additional statement, submitted that day, from Tower Fire Chief Paige Olson, contained misinformation that can be easily refuted by listening to the recording of the radio calls from the scene of the fire in question.
“I am 100-percent confident that if given time to adequately review this information,” Maus told the board, “I would be able to give you complete and correct answers that you are seeking. I pray it’s the desire of the board to seek the truth,” Maus said.
Four members of the fire department who attended the meeting said they were there to back up Maus’s statements, and to refute details in the allegations. Bassing asked if the board would allow these fire department members to speak, but the board declined to hear from them at that time.
The board did not discuss the allegations presented, but a copy of them was available for the public to review. About two dozen people attended the meeting.
After the meeting, a group of four fire department members, who had come to support Maus on short notice, indicated their desire to support their community and do the best job on emergency scenes as possible. They said they were puzzled by the complaints lodged against the department, since in many of these cases they were on the calls in question and did not witness the behaviors cited. They also were concerned about how these complaints were handled, and why there wasn’t communication about any possible issues immediately following the incidents in question.
History of conflicts in the fire department
Maus has filed complaints with MDLI/OSHA against previous boards for their actions regarding the fire department and discriminatory behavior towards himself, after he made safety-related complaints regarding previous fire department officials. While serving as a captain in the department, the board voted to reorganize department duties, eliminating his position. This happened shortly after he had made complaints to the state about safety practices in the department. He remained as a firefighter and emergency medical responder for the department, and then was appointed interim, and then permanent fire chief after a previous board terminated the chief and assistant chief, who were at-will employees of the township. Their dismissal followed alleged incidents of the department refusing to follow direction from the town board in regards to maintenance of fire department equipment, among other matters. At that point, a majority of fire department members, who told the town board they were refusing to respond to emergency calls unless the chief and assistant chief were reinstated, were also dismissed by the town board. Maus has since built back the membership base of the department, hiring several trained and some novice firefighters, and worked to increase the training requirements of department members.