Thousands of Dallas Employee Emails Scanned For Insight on Stemmons Building Challenges
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More than 5,600 emails were scanned this month in an effort to determine whether Dallas Development Services employees were concerned for their safety while working at the Stemmons Building that had numerous fire code violations.
The investigation resulted in just five emails from employees who used keywords to describe conditions at the Stemmons Freeway building, including “unsafe,” “hazard,” “welfare,” “hostile,” “migraine,” “plumbing,” and “unsafe building conditions,” among others.
Dallas City Council members requested the emails during a May 2 meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on General Investigating and Ethics.
A May 24 memorandum from Assistant City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry outlined the results of the email audit.
“Based on the described methodology, city staff [is] aware of only the five emails … that reference working conditions at the Stemmons Building,” Al-Ghafry wrote in the memo to Dallas City Council members. “If it is suggested that other keywords or known emails should be researched, please forward that information to [Bond and Construction Management] and staff will undertake additional research activities on the subject. The emails have been provided to the Ad Hoc Committee on Investigating and Ethics and are available upon request.”
CandysDirt.com filed an open records request for the five emails.
It doesn’t appear that any Dallas official has been reprimanded for what council members have referred to as an embarrassing and disappointing situation.
Al-Ghafry was hired last week as city manager of DeSoto. Another top official involved in the Stemmons building purchase and move, Assistant City Manager Robert Perez, recently accepted a job as city manager of Topeka, Kan.
What Happened at 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway?
Dallas purchased the property at 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway in 2022 for $14.2 million and spent another $6.5 million on improvements, furniture, and moving expenses. The building was intended to be a “one-stop permitting office” to house the Development Services Department and other employees who engage in permitting, said Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert.
About 70 employees from the Development Services Department moved out of the overcrowded Oak Cliff Municipal Center in December but complained about maintenance problems with the building and almost three dozen fire code violations. The employees were moved back to OCMC on April 9.
Councilman Paul Ridley said he’d been contacted by Development Services employees about the working conditions and was concerned that they were moved into a building with asbestos issues and code violations.
“Since city employees were going to occupy this building, I think it was incumbent upon us to do things like fire alarm tests and test the suppression system to ensure the life safety of this building for our own employees, even if it isn’t required,” Ridley said. “Ultimately the responsibility for ensuring the life safety of the occupants of that building is on the building’s owner, is it not? Here, the city was the owner. It seems to me that we just checked the boxes and didn’t do what was necessary to ensure the life safety of our own employees.”
‘Life and Safety Issues’ at Stemmons Building
During the May 2 ad hoc committee meeting, City Council members were told that there were no life and safety issues and the only reason employees were returned to OCMC is because they were violating protocol by “roaming” on floors that were known to be noncompliant or under construction.
The employees also began airing their grievances to local media.
“For the sake of making sure there were not going to be interruptions with light construction areas, I made the decision to send them back to OCMC until we finished the work,” Al-Ghafry said. “In full transparency and confidence, there weren’t any life and safety issues that caused me to do this because we had a correct and valid [temporary certificate of occupancy].”
However, council members said they were hearing from employees that there were life and safety concerns about the building. Councilwoman Gay Donnell Willis asked for the employee emails to determine whether concerns about the building were ignored for months.
Willis read a message that was posted in the WebEx meeting chat during the May 2 committee discussion. The message, which Willis said she believed was from a Development Services employee, was promptly removed from the chat.
“It said, ‘Several employees complained about life safety matters to chain of command and also sent emails to managers. It was never about cosmetic issues. Ask all the employees to get all the truth,’” Willis read from a screenshot of the message.
The councilwoman said she was interested in seeing any emails about life safety issues during the time the 70 employees were at the Stemmons building.
“If you’ve got people working on site who are expressing concerns, I’d like to know what those are, given where we are today,” Willis said. “If it’s a life safety matter, I’d like to know where that fits in this timing and if we acted when we should have.”
Investigation And Evaluation of Stemmons Purchase And Move
Two weeks after the ad hoc committee meeting, Interim Assistant City Manager Robin Bentley issued a memorandum advising that “staff has enlisted third-party expertise to develop a go-forward strategy for the City-owned property at 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway.”
The Dallas Economic Development Corporation will conduct an investigation and evaluation to include four stages: fact gathering, investigation and evaluation, recommendations, and a deliverable report.
The Office of Economic Development will pay $100,000 for services provided by the EDC. A report is due to Interim City Manager Tolbert by July 31, with a City Council briefing scheduled in August.
“As elected officials, our governance role requires we understand what happened,” said District 12 Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn, who chairs the ad hoc committee. “We must learn what’s gone wrong. Accountability is needed, and we must ensure the mistakes made do not happen again.”
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Andrew Espinoza Said in the Ad Hoc meeting on May 2nd that he was responsible for sending us to that building. He is our Director, chief building official, a master code professional and is pushing the ICC agenda that has not been proven to keep our employees safe. I think he is ultimately responsible to pushing us into that grossly neglected building the city should have never bought. We need a new director that has the courage to take better care of the employees.
T C Brodnax is Gone, Robert Perez is Gone, Majed Al Ghafry is out the door, so the only problem left is Andrew Espinoza who doesn’t Care about his employees!!
I guess the city employees lives don’t mean anything to the Mayor, City manager or city council members. There has been a time line given as to how long all officials knew about these matters. A letter was sent to the state fire marshal in late January and nothing was done until four months later??? So all city officials knew but chose to do nothing about the situation until it was aired on local news cast. The Building Official still holds his job after neglecting life safety of his employees. Espinoza who sat on the board of directors of ICC which promotes life stay totally neglected life safety for his own gain. This man/Espinoza should be fired along all other managers who NO INTEGRITY! The city promotes the four E’ but you can’t have ethics without having integrity first it’s a damn same that nothing is being done about this matter and it leaves employees not to care or listen to management who put our lives in danger. Employees now have .NO faith in the Mayor, City Manager or City council to do the right thing since they’ve been trying to hide the issues and have allowed Espinoza to keep his job. What a disgrace!
I’ve been wondering as to why the Building Official Andrew Espinoza, Deputy Building Official Donald Dixson, Engineer Program Administrator over the fire Engineering Team Ahmed Alqaisi, Sr. Architect over the Q-Team Kamil Miskowiec, and a Contractor Alex Barkume and Sr. Human Resources Alexis Landaeta are still employed? All these managers have credentials in Engineering, architecture, fire protection and ICC Certifications but ALL have chosen to neglect life safety for their employees. I thought our job was to protect people and make sure when conducting an inspection or plan review was to make sure that life safety is in place and up to code. These managers all choose to look the other way so that Mr Andrew Espinoza’s agenda was promoted instead of life safety for their employees. Andrew Espinoza’s henchmen/ yes boys have created a hostel work environment where NOW employees NO longer have any trust in all CITY management from the mayor, council, city manager , assistant city manager, building officials and building directors. You all have created a negative work environment where now employees don’t want to come to work or help in any way. It’s a very toxic environment that Mr Andrew Espinoza has created. I don’t understand how Mr. Espinoza who sat on the board of directors of ICC could have just neglected life safety for his own employees just so he could look good in front of council. I really don’t appreciate having my life put in danger just for his personal gain. Andrew Espinoza SHOULD BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY along with his YES BOY’S!!!!
The continued employment of several officials, among them Director Andrew Espinoza and Ahmed Alqaisi, has caused chaos and the dismantling of what was once a great place to work. Their lack of leadership and poor decision-making have led to low morale among employees and a decline in overall knowledge of building inspections. It is imperative that new leadership is brought in to restore order and rebuild the positive work environment that once existed.
It seemed to me that our responsibility as code officials is to not only ensure that life safety measures are in place and up to code during inspections or plan reviews, but also to safeguard human life. And Andrew and his team did not take that responsibility very seriously. In order to advance Mr. Andrew Espinoza’s agenda at the expense of their employees’ lives, these managers all made the decision to turn a blind eye. ICC certified? What a joke! All for what ego?
Employees no longer have faith in any member of council, city managers, assistant city managers, building officials, or building directors, due to Andrew Espinoza’s lack of being a good leader or manager. Employees no longer desire to assist in any way or come to work because of the bad work environment Andrew and his team created. Please explain why people are moving to different departments or retiring early. Why do we have so many vacancies? It’s all caused by the toxic work environment created by Mr. Espinoza and his team. This lack of trust and morale has led to a significant decrease in productivity and overall employee satisfaction within the organization. I fail to see how Mr. Espinoza, a member of the ICC board of directors, could have disregarded his own workers’ life safety in order to appear respectable before the council. Furthermore, he lied and said that he had nothing to do with the purchase or move to Stemmons. He denied any involvement in the decision-making process, despite clear evidence suggesting otherwise.
It’s imperative that we address this issue immediately to prevent further damage to the city’s reputation and success. A toxic work environment not only affects employee retention but also impacts the organization’s overall performance and bottom line.
I tried leaving a new comment to Christian C. and was kicked out.
Is there a limit on only leaving one comment?
No, I do not believe so.
The city officials are all in a fluff about their building. They could not care one bit when I repeatedly voiced concern that my building was approved when the inspector Dixson looked the other way and did not enforce critical safety measures pertaining to a diesel fuel generator allowed dangerously close to my small apartment house in Oak Lawn. No one cared at all and still does not.
I cannot rent my property now because of the diesel fuel exhaust pouring into my property when the generator is on.
The owner of the newly built Anthology of Highland Park, although it is not in HP, does not care the trouble caused to me and the exposure to the health concerns caused by the cancer causing diesel exhaust. They have refused to remedy this situation because it was passed by the inspector and should not have been. The corruption of City of Dallas has caused me to have my property ruined.
The inspector also refused to require the excavation by the developer to be supported and also has affected my property greatly, even though it is in the building code to support this, Dixson told me to ‘just get an attorney”. He was clear to me who he was working for.