One Supervisor is in the township building "all the time"
Clarence Hamm spends an inordinate amount of time in the township building, to the detriment of employees AND taxpayers. It must stop
When some in Exeter read this headline, they said, “Damn that Dave Hughes! They’ve already told him about this.” But it’s not Dave, it’s Clarence Hamm.
After discussions with township employees over the last couple of months in which I was told repeatedly that Hamm is in the township building “all the time”, I filed a Right to Know Request on July 5th asking for key fob entry logs for the Supervisors from December 1st, 2023 to July 5th, 2024.
Kudos to Tina Stephens, the township RTK Officer, once again for getting the RTK done quickly. By July 9th, I had the request fulfilled. What it showed corroborated the “all the time” comments.
My breakdown of the records went like this……
First, I determined how many days they SHOULD have been in there, all of the meeting dates since January 1st. There were thirteen. Three in January (including the reorganization meeting) and two every other month. I don’t have an easy way to count up executive sessions, so making an allowance of some type says to me that they should be in there eighteen times for meetings. That’s fair.
I counted up how many different days each Supervisor’s fob was utilized. I just allowed for each to have used their fob thirteen times, even though Bell was on the phone for two meetings.
The results:
Nothing distinguishable about George Bell and Michelle Kircher, who both clocked in at twenty fob uses. Nor is there anything special about Jack Piho’s number, who logged in 23. Piho texted to me that he knows that he probably showed up at the building a few times and didn’t use his fob, so we’ll go with thirty for him. Still a reasonable figure, especially for the chair of the board.
Hughes’ number was a little higher at 35, but three of his happened on the weekend, when he went in to get his mail, so no employees could have been disturbed.
The interesting one was Hamm, who logged in an astounding 51 times. They were all during meeting or work time, no weekend visits to grab his mail. Allowing for the eighteen times we allowed them all for meetings, it means he was in the township building 33 times for no reason. Five of the meetings, which he attended, showed no usage of the fob, so they were added to his total. Doing the math on that, and removing the weekend, non-work days from the total, Piho and Hamm had been Supervisors for 134 days to that point. This means that Hamm was in the building, exerting undue influence and stress on employees for 38% of the days that he’s been a Supervisor.
Some of the visits were for extended periods of time. For instance, on the 8th of January, his first check-in at the township building was at 2:45 in the afternoon, the last at 6:32 PM. So he was there with employees for almost their last two hours of work, then stuck around for Supervisor candidate interviews. His first check in on the 22nd, a meeting day, was at 11: 52, his last at 6:38. The case can be made that he was there for the entire afternoon of the work day. On the 9th of May, he was there from 9 AM until after 5 PM. On the 4th of March he was there for almost two hours. On the 27th, he was there from 8 AM until just before 1 PM. On the 11th, from just before 10 AM until his last scan at almost 7. There are more items on the list where he was there for 30-45 minutes, not a quick drop in to pick up mail.
It is also possible that Hamm didn’t stay the entire day, or for the long periods listed above. But in the case of March 11th, he has four distinct check-in times, four separate periods. What possible reason is there for him to be there four different times in one day? And is it better if he did it that way? Full day or in and out all day long, he's disturbing people who are trying to work. A relief factor of him having left them to do their work is shattered by his return.
In the past two years, the BOS has made a habit of pointing out when Hughes has been in the township building and “disturbing” staff. They’ve gone so far as to admonish him in the form of a “censure”, a list of grievances that in reality turned out to be the very things that they themselves, Bell, Vollmer, and Gardella, were doing. The question is, why is it not OK for Hughes to be in the building, but it’s perfectly fine for Hamm to spend entire days, pestering and getting in the way of employees? We know that he probably misses his old buddies in Public Works. But they have jobs to do, jobs for which they’re being paid with tax dollars. It is unfair to the taxpayers to pay them for him to be in there, holding them up, yapping it up about the good ole days, when he was in charge. Not to mention the fact that it steps on the toes of current Public Works Director Larry Piersol. Nor is it fair for him to sit in what has been referred to as “the bullpen”, the inner office, talking to the attractive ladies who are working, who are trying to do the people’s business. This is behavior of his that we’ve heard about in the past, when he was working for the township. He spent a LOT of time in the inner office, chatting the ladies up, in some insane desire to feel like he’s young, virile, and wanted again. Can the case be made that this would be sexual harassment by a superior? Perhaps THIS is the ACTUAL sexual harassment that was spoken about untruthfully by the previous board, when they lied about the contents of the “harassment report”.
Based on private complaints that Exeter employees have lodged with me, it is safe to say that Hamm is inhibiting the ability of township staff to get work done. Just because he was the former head of the Public Works Department, and on two separate occasions the interim township manager, doesn’t mean that he has carte blanche’ to do what he wishes. Whether or not he wants to acknowledge it, the presence of an elected official, a “boss”, a higher level of management than their immediate supervisor, is not conducive to people getting work done. It puts people on edge. If someone of that status is present 38% of the time, without proper authority to be, a major problem exists.
This is a problem that should not exist. When he was the interim township manager before the township fired him, Hamm got a call about Hughes being at the RCC and “bothering employees”. He drove over there and chased Hughes off the property. So explain to me why it is that it was that way with a Supervisor at that time, but it isn’t that way now. Why is a Supervisor allowed to hang employees up, keep them from doing their jobs by regailing them with tales of past glories of Exeter Township? Hamm should know better. But it appears that those rules don’t apply to him, since he’s Clarence, and he used to work there.
An abuse of power is an abuse of power. THIS is an abuse of power. Reliving the olden days is a detriment to people getting work done. Some self awareness would go a long way to resolve this. Or, perhaps a censure would solve it. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.