County Commissioners Must Force County Administrator Gregory Dill to Resign

Washtenaw County, because of Gregory Dill’s professional negligence and ineptitude as administrator, has no domestic violence shelter. Women and children who seek shelter at SafeHouse, are being turned away at the door and over the phone, a fact both Dill and the Washtenaw County Commissioners were made aware of weeks ago. Gregory Dill must resign as County Administrator. If he won’t resign, the Washtenaw County Commissioners must fire him.

Dill wears two hats. He is the Washtenaw County Administrator (since 2016). He is also a member of the Board of Directors of SafeHouse Center. The County owns the building which houses SafeHouse Center. This means that the County Commissioners and Gregory Dill are the landlords responsible for the documented unsafe and unsanitary conditions in their county-owned building. The County also has a contract for services with SafeHouse Center to provide specific social services to residents of Washtenaw County. By refusing shelter to those who seek it, and by not providing contractually obligated services, SafeHouse is in breach of that contract. SafeHouse Center continues to take public money for services not provided. Yet Dill, (perhaps because he’s a SafeHouse Board member?) has not terminated the contract between the County and SafeHouse, as is the County’s contractual right to do.

The elected members of County’s Board of Commissioners have a legal duty to hold Dill accountable. In the case of SafeHouse Center, the failure of these elected officials to exercise reasonable oversight, combined with Dill’s documented long-standing facility and managerial negligence, may be calculated in human lives. According to the survivors who spoke to the County Commissioners on October 6, the result has been the further traumatization and victimization of an unknown number of women and children, the terrorization of an unknown number of women and children, and the continued physical and sexual abuse of an unknown number of women and children turned away from SafeHouse Center, and not provided services by SafeHouse Center’s staff.

At the October 6, 2021 meeting of the County Commissioners, two survivors of sexual abuse spoke at the invitation of the Chair of the Board, Susan E. Shink. The women spoke candidly and credibly about their victimization at the hands of SafeHouse’s staff, including Executive Director Barbara Niess-May. The women spoke candidly about the unsafe and unsanitary conditions at SafeHouse Center. The women justifiably criticized the poor decision Dill made to place them at a Wayne County motel without food, protection, treatment, legal or medical help after SafeHouse staff made the women homeless. Throughout the women’s comments made via Zoom, Dill repeatedly turned off his camera.

After the SafeHouse survivors spoke at the October 6 meeting, Dill minimized the required repairs necessary to bring the county’s building into compliance with safety and health codes, he also defended his decision to place the women in a motel without food or protection. Dill patted himself on the back for doing “something.” It took a survivor to point out Dill’s minimization of the long-term neglect of the county’s building that houses SafeHouse Center.

Dill has worked for the County since 2009, including as the Director of Infrastructure Management and the Director of Administrative Operations. Recent events have shown that Dill is largely responsible for the human disaster at SafeHouse Center. Moreover, his failures further traumatized already traumatized women and children. His actions (and failure to act) put women and children in mortal danger, as evidenced by the domestic violence assailant being held on $3 million cash bond.

Dill has claimed that, until quite recently, he was unaware of the dire managerial, operational and safety issues brought to light by survivors housed at SafeHouse Center. The Ann Arbor Independent asked Dill for comments via email and phone. He, like SafeHouse Executive Barbara Niess-May, and SafeHouse Board President Tara Mahoney, chose not to respond. Deceiving his bosses and the public in order to cover up his choice to ignore the revelations brought to his attention concerning SafeHouse Center, severely damaged his credibility.

Dill’s credibility was further damaged on September 22, when as a member of the SafeHouse Board of Directors, he and his Board member colleagues sent out a sycophantic letter to the public in which they expressed their absolute confidence in the SafeHouse Center Executive Director, Barbara Niess-May. In that same letter, the Board announced an “independent” investigation of the allegations published by The Ann Arbor Independent in July and August. The investigator whom they initially chose was employed as a temporary faculty member at the U-M Law School, along with a member of the SafeHouse Center Board.

In late-August and early-September, SafeHouse Center evicted multiple victims of domestic and sexual violence and made them homeless. Only in response to the cajoling of a domestic violence advocate did the Washtenaw County Administrator come up with a “solution.” He offered the victims and their children, five, one-week vouchers at a two-star motel which, in various online reviews, is described as being populated by crack addicts. The County Administrator placed the traumatized women in that motel without money, food, protection, psychological or medical treatment, and without the means to get their children to schools in Washtenaw County. As a result of his “solution,” the women and children were stalked by their assailants, threatened, terrorized and further traumatized.

On October 6 County Commissioners allocated $75,000 in emergency funding to provide shelter, protection and a variety of services to women and children whom SafeHouse Center evicted in August and September, and whom SafeHouse Center is presently turning away due to poor Board oversight and “toxic” management. Dill, instead of immediately determining what the victims and their families needed, chose to job out an emergency allocation of funding to one of his departments. As a result, Gregory Dill still has not met victims’ immediate needs for food, transportation, clothing, protection, medicine, psychological and medical treatment.

So long as Gregory Dill remains Administrator, Washtenaw County Commissioners send a clear message that the continued brutalization of low-income, minority, physically and sexually abused women and their children matters less to them than protecting the county employee whose negligence led directly to the mistreatment, victimization and suffering of those women and children.