Gainesville firefighters in midst of controversy
Dickey, Sprifke
Published: December 15, 2008
Updated: December 15, 2008
Gary Sprifke Jr. and Kevin Dickey recently found themselves in a situation they don’t like.
They were suspended from the Gainesville Volunteer Fire Department.
Both men started as volunteer firefighters in Prince William County in 1990, but said their troubles started on Aug. 5, on election night at Station 4.
Dickey was running for treasurer, a position held by Wanda Bird, the wife of Richard Bird, the chief of the volunteer department.
Sprifke was running for a position on the board of directors.
The men said Richard Bird suspended them from the department 30 minutes before the election was to take place.
Sprifke said Richard Bird charged him with falsifying official documents.
Dickey still doesn’t know what he was charged with.
On Sept. 16, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors authorized an audit of the department, said Nikki Brown, Prince William County spokeswoman.
Sprifke and Dickey said they did nothing wrong. “We had never, ever violated a rule or bylaw in this station,” Dickey said.
Soon after their suspensions, Dickey and Sprifke started collecting documentation, hired a lawyer and took their case to the Prince William County Fire and Rescue Association, which opened an investigation.
Among the documents they collected was a letter from Prince William Fire and Rescue Chief Kevin McGee, who is also the president of the fire and rescue association.
In the letter that was addressed to John McCarty, president of the Gainesville District Volunteer Fire Department, McGee wrote that the association could not conclude the investigation “because of a lack of cooperation from the Gainesville Volunteer Fire Department Board of Directors, Chief Bird and no proper notice was offered to the suspended members.”
The letter further stated that the investigators had determined that Sprifke had not falsified documents and Dickey never got “proper notice of the charges against him.”
McGee recommended that Sprifke and Dickey be reinstated.
Sprifke and Dickey said they don’t know if they will ever be able to volunteer in the county again.
“Until this audit gets finished with all the facts, there’s no way for me to clear my name,” the 37-year-old Sprifke said.“I never thought this would happen to me.”
The audit is being conducted by the county’s Internal Audit Division and is ongoing, Brown said.
Information about the audit will not be available under the Freedom of Information Act until the audit is completed and made public in early 2009, Brown said.
Dickey said he resents the lack of due process.
“He’s done us this way and has not given us any chance at all to sit down in front of any kind of mediation to get this straightened out,” he said.
In a short phone interview, Bird said he could not comment on the case until he had spoken to his lawyer.
Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.
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Reader Reactions
This article barely scratches the surface of the problems at Gainesville.
For decades Richard and Wanda Bird have hung on to power by influencing - thru hook or crook - the balance of power on
the board of directors there. They themselves make up two of those seven board spots. This itself would be little more than an ethical conflict of interest if they ran the firehouse well - but they don’t. Not only do they not hold the certs to be chief and rescue chief respectively, they often fill officer positions with friends who are also not qualified by county or state guidelines. It’s a dangerous mix nepotism and cronyism, and a miracle no one’s died on the job yet.
How do they continue running the place like this? They have the board expel or drive out all members - even on the board of
directors - who are not in their pockets. I witnessed dozens of people removed from the rolls there till my own expulsion. Great firefighters, EMTs, drivers, and others who sacrificed valuable family time to serve the community as volunteers. And for your info, it’s not the board’s right to remove members - it’s the membership’s, according to the bylaws. But they continue to do so unabated, for fear of retribution.
And these force-outs are to the detriment of operations. We had twice the membership six years ago as now, and can only run
four crews due to it. If you research volunteer fire operations you’ll find that stations with four crews rarely survive, as their members run too many hours and burn out, while stations with five crews minimum fare much better. But the Birds would never let that fifth crew get off the ground, and instead act like they are the saviors of the station by running shifts that were vacated. Easy for them cos they not only live rent free in the old firehouse in Haymarket but also in the current one, even the family members who were not even members of the dept.
With this diminishing membership the very safety of the community is put at risk. Richard makes the county out to be the bad
guys for inserting career people into the picture. But if Richard and Wanda were gone i know dozens of ex-members who would come back, and we’d HAVE five crews.
Sadly there’s little PWC or the commonwealth can do. They say it’s a matter for the ex-members to take them to circuit court. Fine if we had wads of cash to fight, while the Birds would fight back using station money.
I’d heard stories for years of people driven out for trying to make changes, or simply get the chief to follow the bylaws -
which he himself told me don’t mean a thing. Two committees were formed to fix the bylaws so even Richard might follow them, but he and the board drove the members of those committees out of the firehouse. In the 2007 elections i ran for a board position to see for myself what all the fuss was, and it didn’t take long to witness firsthand what shenanigans take place behind closed doors.
By “behind closed doors” let me give you a quick peek into Gainesville’s board. They use something called “Executive Session” to do business behind the backs of the membership. See, in a corporation, all board business is supposed to be recorded and posted, as the members have a right to see the minutes and to overturn any board decisions. However when business is done off the record the membership is none the wiser. At Gainesville the board does things like sign documents and illegally remove members during this Exec Session.
That said, first, Executive Session is not even IN the company’s bylaws. Secondly, ES as defined by Robert’s Rules (Google it) is ONLY for the protection of records in personnel cases, where say for example someone is accused of a crime - rather than repeat the allegation in public minutes, it’s only recorded in the secretary’s cabinet.
Anyhow, I brought up what i saw the board doing in Exec Session during a membership meeting, and was immediately suspended
- in violation of federal whistleblower law. And without even a valid quorum. They claimed i violated the Exec Session, but in fact the members had the right to know how ES was being misused. And soon as my suspension was up the board trumped up more bogus charges and expelled me.
The membership is too afraid to stand up to these people as they’ve seen what happens to those who do, and these members just
want to run calls. And many can’t afford the hassle because they carry clearances that would be lost if any legal problems
stemmed from it. As the article points out there is an investigation ongoing, and the findings will hopefully vindicate some of us and we can run calls there again.
Look forward to the station getting a new chief and board, but not holding my breath.
—VA firefighter/EMT/driver, former Gainesville VFD board member
What about Mr. Dickey having been the Chief at Coles District Vol Fire Dept.? Several times he tried to remove the PWC Dept. of Fire and Rescue career staff asigned to that station. Locked them out of the building, removed their gear from the station prior to arriving for work?? And now he wants to be part of another dept, when just recently he showed back up at Coles Dist. VFD and all the volunteers walked out of the station and said if he returns they quit!! Sounds to me like the folks over at Gainesville finally wised up to he sneaky ways and got rid of the problem!! I hope the Tax payers are going to hear that side of the story as well, I don’t have all the details. But I’m sure if the editor were to call that station, more information could be brought to light. Same on those two people for trying to destroy a volunteer fire dept.
We love and need our VOLUNTEERS.
We don’t need a Chief that thinks he’s God.
Anyone can see through this episode and those Volunteers need to be reinstated now!
Do we see a comparison in Chief Bird and the long ago Stoffregen of the Sheriffs Dept. He got to big for his britches and it appears Chief Bird has also.
The article said that Chief Bird could not comment until he spoke with his lawyer. How would they get the funding to hire a lawyer? I can’t imagine county funds would be approved to pay for a lawyer to represent during an audit that the county themselves are conducting. Would they? Maybe the audit will clear all this up because all of the recent fund raiser requests that we get in Gainesville say they are for “fire and rescue equipment” I certainly hope they are not using donated money for purposes other than what they are specified for. I also heard that not only is Bird the Chief and his wife treasurer, but they actually live in the station. Is that true? Can families live in county fire stations? That surely would have to require some type of special permission from someone. I’m going to try and call Supervisor Stirrup’s office and see if it’s true. With this tough economy there are probably many citizens that would volunteer if they could house their family too.
There is no need to have 12 different volunteer fire departments with 12 fire chiefs. There should be only one fire department, Prince William County Department of Fire & Rescue, career personnel supplemented by volunteers personnel. It should be model after Fairfax Coutny Fire & Rescue Department. It will probably save taxpayers some money to have a single fire department.
Can’t say I’m surprised. “Family values” are common throughout the ranks of this house.
“Take home cars” is only the tip of the iceberg, in the case of the Gainesville station, the “take home car” is used as a personal vehicle for all purposes, breakfast at McDonalds, shopping at Target. Add to that the personal use of the old fire station, etc., etc. etc.
(Do the right thing)
I guess your right but I have read that our county fire service is the “nationwide model combination career and volunteer fire service.” Then something like this surfaces and you’re left scratching your head. If I were the Chief of a Department the very last position I would want a relative, much less MY WIFE, to fill, would be one involving the money.
This thing looks like it could impact the way the whole service operates. The Fire & Rescue Association should do something about this. Even though Bird is a member sometimes people have to be kept in check. The Fire & Rescue Association is a sub-committee of the Board. If they wait and make the Supervisors act they may not like the outcome. Corruption is on center stage of the national headlines. We certainly do not need it on the center stage of our local headlines.
Sounds like Chief Bird is running his fire station no differently than some of these foreign governments. If you don’t like the opposition, you find a way to disqualify them before the democratic process takes hold.
(Getinvolved)
The moral of this story on how the Gainesville Fire Station is operated by Chief Bird,his wife, and other various family members,“Don’t mess with the Family!“ I liken it to an episode of the Sopranos.
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