Park Ridge’s policy aimed at addressing sexual harassment worked as designed, city officials said in the wake of the fire chief’s resignation over allegations that he harassed a female city worker.
Fire Chief Craig Gjelsten resigned April 9, just before the Park Ridge Board of Police and Fire Commissioners was to consider the city’s request to suspend him without pay pending a formal hearing of the allegations, city officials confirmed.
He had been on leave since February, after the woman, a Fire Department employee but not a firefighter, filed a sexual harassment complaint stating that, while in Gjelsten’s locked office, he asked her to remove her pants and lift her shirt. The complaint also said Gjelsten continued to harass her for days after that.
Under terms of an agreement with the city reached Friday, Gjelsten waived his right to be reinstated in his job or seek future employment with the city. He also agreed to not seek “line of duty” disability benefits, or benefits provided by the Illinois Public Safety Employee Benefits and Public Employee Disability acts, but will seek “not in the line of duty” disability benefits from the Park Ridge Firefighters’ Pension Fund.
City officials agreed to not intervene in his pending hearing before the pension fund board.
“It’s a workplace complaint. There are no criminal or civil charges,” said City Manager James Hock, adding that he does not anticipate any legal action by the victim against the city. “We’ve done everything we can to respond to the employee’s complaint, and I believe we’ve resolved it.”
Gjelsten was named fire chief in October 2008, after a short stint as acting chief following the retirement of Chief Ed Dubowski. After joining the department in 1991, Gjelsten was promoted to deputy chief in 1999, and earned praise from city officials for his work during the September 2008 floods that resulted from massive storms.
Hock said this was the first sexual harassment complaint during his tenure as city manager. Park Ridge is not immune to a problem that affects all walks of life, he said, but added that the city has very clear policies prohibiting harassment.
“It’s people in power, executives, who think the rules don’t apply to them. In this case, that’s the atrocity of the situation. These are the people you expect to enforce these provisions in their departments,” Hock said.
Neither Gjelsten nor his attorney could be reached for comment.
