Discord continues to flare in the Latrobe Fire Department.

After several months of strife, city officials agreed to look into an attempt by some firefighters to oust Chief John Brasile.

Mayor Rosie Wolford said a council committee would investigate any written documentation firefighters produce that might establish a “just cause” for removing Brasile from the office.

Nico Giovannagelo, a captain in the department’s Goodwill Hose Company No. 1, claims he has such evidence.

The exchange between Giovannagelo and Wolford came to a head at a recent council meeting, following a reported March 5 vote by firefighters to name Giovannagelo as new chief — an election deemed invalid by the city.

Firefighters informed the city that they had re-elected Brasile to a new two-year term as chief in December, Solicitor John Greiner said. Following that recommendation, council reappointed Brasile as chief, including his annual compensation of $5,969, Greiner said.

“Once he’s reappointed for a two-year term, he can’t be replaced unless he’s removed for cause or resigns,” the solicitor said. “The fact that they had another election, it’s not the right time for that, according to the city code.”

Brasile, who noted he is recovering from knee surgery, has not attended council meetings for several months. In his absence, others have lashed out with personal attacks against him, he said.

“They can charge me with anything they want. I’ve done nothing wrong,” Brasile told the Tribune-Review.

Wolford said council’s investigation of any allegations against Brasile should include “asking other people what they know about this, including (Brasile). He has the right to tell his side of the story.”

She noted that a potential cause for removing the fire chief would be “a violation of his oath of office that would hurt the city, not necessarily a disagreement with other people in the fire department.”

The March 5 vote for chief was “illegal” and occurred at a meeting that was stacked with Giovannagelo’s supporters, Brasile charged. “It was null and void,” he said of the vote. “They made their own ballot up.”

“I still would have won… if you took my entire company out of the mix,” Giovannagelo said.

Goodwill Hose is one of five companies in the department.

At the Jan. 6 council meeting, Goodwill Hose members questioned a decision by department officials to temporarily lock down the company in December and to suspend seven of its firefighters, including Giovannagelo, which prevented them from participating in the initial voting for fire chief. The firefighters noted they have since been reinstated.

Wolford said the lockdown resulted from “discrepancies in some reporting procedures surrounding federal grants.”

She said figures were altered for fire calls individual Company 1 members responded to in January-March 2019. Those figures help determine which firefighters respond to at least 15% of their company’s annual emergency calls, a threshold that makes them eligible for a $550 stipend under a federal SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grant program.

Giovannagelo has said that fire response figures for the first three months of 2019 had to be entered several months after the fact because he’d initially lacked access to fire company software.

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