File PhotoTensions continue to boil within the City of Meridian after a second former department head filed a legal complaint against the city for retaliation.

The city of Meridian cited numerous reasons for firing Parks and Recreation Director Kelvin McGruder in response to a legal complaint McGruder filed against the city.

On Sept. 19, McGruder filed a complaint in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, accusing the city of retaliation and discrimination following his public ousting. 

According to the complaint, McGruder said the city retaliated against him after he reported that other employees had violated city policies or abused flex/ comp time.

“The City had good faith to suspend and ultimately terminate McGruder,” the city’s response said. “On April 9, 2018, employees of a local non-profit met in person with Mayor Percy Bland… and reported they had information that McGruder was misappropriating City funds through his position of Director of Parks and Recreation.”

Specifically, the city spells out allegations of McGruder improperly handling funds from facility rentals, concessions and cash transactions at Lakeview Golf Course.

All of those areas emerged during city budget talks as transactions that needed better documentation.

Richie McAlister, the city’s chief administrative officer, contacted the city’s external auditing firm Breazeale, Saunders and O’Neil, Ltd. the same day and requested it investigate, according to the response. 

After the firm reviewed some of the contracts and logs from Parks and Recreation, McAlister notified the State Auditor’s Office the next day, according to the response.

“(The city administration, the auditing firm and the auditor’s office) learned McGruder had been turning in timesheets for work allegedly performed by his son at the Parks and Recreation Department,” the response said. “Upon further investigation, it was reported by employees in the department they had never seen McGruder’s son at work in the City of Meridian.”

McGruder’s son lives and plays basketball in Hattiesburg on a team schedule that directly conflicts with his timesheet records presented by McGruder, according to the city response.

The city continued to provide information to the state auditor’s office and curtailed McGruder’s ability to make purchases or take cash payments, instead requiring permission for all purchase orders and transferring cash payment handling to Community Development. 

On May 31, McGruder was suspended and instructed not to contact any other city employees because of “an outside investigation.” 

The complaint said that as McGruder had his phone, city truck and iPad confiscated, he asked to access the truck. 

“While standing near the passenger door of the work truck, McGruder attempted to grab a stack of paperwork from the front seat and cash fell to the floor of the truck with various other paperwork,” the response said. “(A) police officer stopped McGruder from taking the cash or the paperwork, but allowed McGruder to obtain the keys to his house.”

City police officers documented the contents of McGruder’s vehicle and a padlock was placed on the doors of McGruder’s offices, the complaint said. McGruder’s things were then turned over to the state auditor’s office along with access to the city’s computer systems, facilities and personnel records, according to the response.

Over the summer, the city found: a citizen who complained that McGruder never provided a receipt for his facility rental and that McGruder’s paper calendar didn’t match official facility rental records; a city vendor who said McGruder had contacted him; one lawn service provider for the city who was disabled and may have never performed services for the city; and another citizen who said McGruder had charged him $1,000 more than the city price for a facility rental.

McGruder was terminated on July 18 after Weston Lindemann, the council representative for Ward 5, indicated that McGruder had reached out to him with timecards similar to the timecards discovered in McGruder’s truck – timecards that the complaint said don’t match Human Resources’ official records.

“The City had a legitimate governmental reason to suspend and ultimately terminate McGruder that had nothing to do with his race or any alleged retaliation,” the city response said. 

In his complaint, McGruder accused other previous department heads of misconduct, including Chief Financial Officer David Whitaker, Director of Public Safety Buck Roberts and Community Development Director Bunky Partridge.

To counter McGruder’s claim that Whitaker “allegedly misappropriated and/or mismanaged $2.5 million,” the city responded that Whitaker had “overestimated tax receipts and the budget hadn’t been adjusted to make up for the shortfall.”

The city acknowledged in the response that Partridge had been accused of sexual harassment, as McGruder stated in his complaint, but doesn’t go into the allegations and denied that he had been placed on administrative leave with pay.

As for Roberts, McGruder claimed Roberts violated environmental protection laws when he “illegally” dumped material on city property and “moonlight(ed)on city time as a security officer at a local credit union.”

The city responded that the “dumping” had been reported to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, which didn’t have an update on the investigation as of Oct. 3. The city said it didn’t have evidence of moonlighting. 

Roberts retired in September of 2017 and MDEQ investigators didn’t visit the site until late October. 

McGruder claimed that he sent an email to the city’s attorneys invoking his right as a whistleblower but the attorneys have said that the email, as written, was sent to an email address that didn’t exist and the city’s attorneys said they never located the email from McGruder. 

Neither Bland nor McAlister responded to The Meridian Star’s request for comment.

Attorney Will Simmons, one of the city’s attorneys, didn’t respond to questions about whether the city would pursue charges against McGruder for the actions reported in the response. 

A call to McGruder’s attorney, Louis H. Watson, of Jackson Jr., was not immediately returned.