CORYDON — There were a few tense moments from cross examination during the fourth day of the civil case Steve Green vs. City of Creston, Water Works Board of Trustees Thursday at the Wayne County Courthouse.
Only two witnesses made it to the stand, current Creston Water Works office manager Angie West and former general manager and plaintiff Steve Green.
West started the day explaining her duties as office manager. She was trained by the first witness of the case, Cheryl Eblen.
She told the jury about helping draft Green’s final contract in 2011 adding paragraph 12 before it was put before the board.
“I met with Mr. Green and he and I went over what he wanted to put on there as far as wording,” West said.
West helped Green make the changes to the contract recommended by the board to the second and fourth paragraphs after the meeting.
Prior to 2011, the contract only had minor adjustments from Green’s first contract with the board.
“This is the contract that moved me from Pella to Creston,” Green said about his original contract.
West also explained how she prepared the Creston Water Works for the yearly audit and her interaction with Green after he discovered Randy Cook had instructed her to reduce his accumulated vacation time from more than 400 to 80 hours.
“He (Green) wasn’t happy as far as taking those hours off,” West said.
The following year when Cook questioned why the vacation hours were put back, West said she told Cook to ask Green about accumulating vacation hours.
Vacation pay
Green’s right to accumulate vacation hours has been a debated topic throughout the case.
“It’s been hard to the last seven or eight years that I was employed,” Green said.
During his testimony, Green said he had “multiple” discussions with the full board and individual board members about being too busy to take vacation.
“We’d been pretty busy. We’d done a lot of work. I hadn’t been able to use any vacation,” Green said. “Vickie and I wanted to spend some time together and do some things we had always talked about, so I had told them that I was giving some real strong thoughts to retirement.”
Green, 62, said paragraph 12 in his contract was a deal he struck with the board to sign one more contract instead of retiring early.
“They (the board) offered to put this in writing,” Green said. “I said if you are willing to work with that, I’ll be glad to stay and finish these projects.”
The idea of paying out the vacation and sick time was to bridge the gap of paying Green’s insurance premium until he became eligible for Medicare.
“You don’t keep track of your own stuff, so I told them in the office to keep those numbers so I’m not the one keeping the numbers,” Green said. “I want them right just as much as anyone else.”
Additional projects
Green took the stand after the lunch break at 1:30 p.m. and will return to the stand to continue cross examination 9:30 a.m. Friday.
Two major projects that involved Creston Water Works have been a main theme throughout most of the witness testimonies. They are the Summit Lake and Creston Water Works Expansion.
Green gave rough estimates of where the funding came for the two projects. He said Summit Lake was paid for with federal and state dollars, while the expansion project was about 80 percent funded by Southern Iowa Rural Water Association (SIRWA).
“There was a need to increase the capacity of the plant and there was a need to upgrade the plant for regulatory compliance,” Green said.
He felt that working as a supervisor on the two projects would be above and beyond his typical daily work, so he discussed the situation with the full board.
“They asked me if there was any way to work that out and I said well, I would like to be paid for the additional hours on the project,” Green said. “They were uncomfortable with that so they said well, how about we just give you … three hours per week to do that work (on each project). I knew it was going to take a lot more work than that, but I thought well, if they are going to make an offer, that’s OK.”
Green drafted two memos – one for each project – and they were signed by board members Dennis Bailey and Ken Sharp. But, the vote to approve the additional pay by the full board was never recorded in the meeting minutes.
Creston Water Works attorney Patrick Smith asked multiple times in multiple ways how Green felt he had the authority to receive extra pay for the additional work on the projects.
“You can’t see it in the meeting minutes,” Smith said.
There were two objections to Smith’s questions about the lack of a recorded vote for Green’s additional pay. One was sustained, the other was overruled.
Smith pointed out the fact that Green kept the minutes for the board meetings and worked with his office assistant to finalize the copies that were approved at the next month’s meeting.
“The board is the person to review that and at the next meeting they shouldn’t have approved the minutes unless they saw it,” Green said. “They write stuff down too.”
Smith added instances from the deposition where Green’s answers were different than the ones told before the jury regarding how long he had been taking minutes at board meetings during his career.
“I am blaming all of us for missing it, me too,” Green said.
Administrative leave
When Green was placed on administrative leave at an emergency meeting in November 2012, he said he did not know and was not told why he was being put on administrative leave. He was asked to turn over his keys, credit cards and clean out his office.
Since he drove the company truck to work that day and turned over his keys, Green said he walked home.
In a letter to Dennis Bailey, Green proposed to be reinstated as general manager so he could resign from the position. He also asked about the insurance payments from his contract so he could stay insured and made a recommendation about Steve Yarkosky, who is now the Creston Water Works plant manager and general manger.
Current board chairman Lee McNichols will follow Green on the witness stand Friday. During multiple testimonies witnesses have referenced McNichols as one of the board members who Cook was in contact with after the 2012 audit.