(File Photo by Kevin Mathewson, Kenosha County Eye)
After working less than six months for the Village of Salem Lakes as its Public Works Superintendent, Kevin Hajduk has been terminated. Effective October 14, 2024, Hajduk is no longer employed with the village. The Village Administrator confirmed with KCE that Hajduk was no longer employed by the village, but couldn’t give details because she said it was a personnel issue. KCE has requested his personnel file.
According to a whistleblower, Hajduk was accused and investigated for alleged misconduct having to deal with using village property for personal use. If this seems familiar, this type of misconduct happened from other employees under the leadership of the old board and administrator. Those employees are no longer with the village.
KCE received information from a whistleblower at the village. First, Hajduk had his pontoon boat trailer stored on the village’s public works headquarters’ property for many months during boating season.
After boating season was over, Hajduk brought his boat to the village’s public works headquarters’ property to seemingly be stored for the fall, winter, and early spring months. Storing a pontoon boat and trailer for the winter can cost several thousand dollars, a cost that Hajduk seemed to be avoiding by using the village to store the boat and trailer. Hajduk was asked by one of the staffers who the pontoon belonged to and Hajduk replied something to the effect of “It’s mine, you got a problem with it?”
Next, the whistleblower said that Hajduk had his staff replace a window wiper motor at the taxpayers’ expense and during the work day.
KCE sent the photos and the information to Village Administrator Cassandra Hiller. She took immediate action, and seemed very upset. According to a source, Hajduk lied about what he said to his employee and he told Hiller that the conversation never happened. He also told her that his friend’s truck was fixed “after hours.” Village surveillance footage, however, indicated that Hajduk lied many times. It was also alleged that Hajduk brought home tools from the village, like a chainsaw, and even brought one tool back damaged.
(File Photo by Kevin Mathewson, Kenosha County Eye)
Village President Rita Bucur also declined comment on the matter, but KCE received emails pursuant to a public records request with her thoughts:
“Cassandra,
It has come to my attention today from Kevin Mathewson as well as some residents that we have employees of the highway department storing personal items such as boats on Village property. In addition to that, using Village resources and facilities to work on their personal vehicles.
I know you are aware this is the exact same thing that the previous administration and Board allowed and turned a blind eye to. This is completely unacceptable to me and I will not allow this. I ran on cleaning this behavior up and I intend to follow through with that.
Now that the word is out in the community this makes all of us, including yourself, look bad and just the same as previous[ly]. Any grown adult knows better, they know this is wrong. It is blatant disrespect and abuse of Village resources. At minimum, I expect the individual(s) involved to be written up and/or suspended for a few days without pay. I realize these are your employees, however, we need to be swift and firm on how we address this and to set an example for [staff]. I am sorry to have to write this email, but I am furious that this is happening. The taxpayers who elected us on our promise of not letting this happen again would feel the same. Please follow up with me on what you intend to do.”
Hiller responded with “Rita, I am also furious!”
Hiller then sent an email to all employees warning them that there is to be “no personal property stored on or within Village Property at any time and no work on personal vehicles within our shop or on Village property.”
Trustee Pete Poli called on Hiller to immediately draft a policy to strengthen rules that would prohibit this type of behavior.
This past Monday, October 14, 2024, Hiller terminated Hajduk’s employment. He first day with the village was April 29, 2024.
Village taxpayer and business owner Brian Filiatreault told KCE “I’m very happy and proud that the village acted swiftly. The last thing this village needs is ‘storage gate’ #2. I’m happy that the employees who noticed this behavior came forward. We need more people in government willing to say something when they see something wrong.”
44 Responses
GREED!
Who was in charge of hiring this stellar employee? Starting to have Murdock Flashbacks. Please tell me the board didn’t do this.
This is the guy who said the Village needed to buy a skid loader that cost nearly 100k. What to replace the one that Culat and Murdock toasted at Culat acres? From what I heard the Village couldn’t afford that expense, so why would it get approved? The Staff championed that expense at a meeting. Interesting? Why not rent or fix the old one, cheap machines to fix, case 1840 units I believe.
Maybe? the Carrier fellow should be watching the employees instead of taxpayers, it sure seems like somebody needs to be watching employees’ activities more, counting on Brad to police bad behavior is probably why we are here again.
Let’s keep in mind who is in charge of Kevin. I’m pretty sure it’s Brad, shocked this could have happened again. OMG. Brain dead Alert. Brad should stay in the sewer plant, having him in charge of PW is clearly not working.
Why are Culat and Murdoch being sued to replace the skid loader they ruined? They ruined it, they should be responsible for replacing it!
Nice to see, no more BS.
Bad boys, bad boys
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do when KCE comes for you?
Bad boys, bad boys
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do when Kevin comes for you?
Hajduk
Clearly a slow learner.
Cassandra: promote from within
And wages equal abd better than Hajduk
Plus a hiring bonus plus amount equal to it as a penalty for not promoting from within in the first place!
The problem from promoting within is most of the employees still there were were Paul’s buddy’s. Covering for him all along. And the ones that weren’t dont want that job. Maybe we should look into who is in charge of the public works superintendent. Like the director of public works. All of this has happened under his watch. Who for years was part of the problem in taking money and using a village truck as a personal vehicle on and off company time.
I think you missed a firing.
Appointing Brad Public Works Director is like “putting the fox in the hen house.
Yep, they did miss firing someone.
Hiring from within will pertpetuate the swamp. Whomever they hire should NOT be from Illinois. Cannot he someone Cassandra is pals with bc she’s a Dem.
Term limits are essential for all public offices and the trustees limits should be staggered.
They r staggered. There r term limits-vote.. Within is the source of the info
WTF getting to be like Pleasant Prairie. Next thing you know they’ll be digging pools.
Unpleasant Prairie needs to get rid of fat daddy and his sidekick Pollocoff and get rid of back room dealing.
It’s the opposite of PP. This board and administrator actually acts when it finds things like this out. Not like the old regime which didn’t do anything and in fact were active participants.
Swift action, transparency and resolution.
How refreshing.
Sounds like Cassandra needs to drive around village buildings and walk around a bit more. What’s in the basement of highway, village hall , 2nd floor of fire-highway?
Even stop in and have lunch with them. Talk about anything that comes up.
Trust but verify
Very good point…….After reading so many of these employee use of taxpayer paid time and equipment it’s pretty obvious that those who are paid to oversee operations of villages, towns, cities, and counties must never get thier ass off thier chair and simply walk around thier kingdom and talk to people.
Plausible deniability no doubt.
The employees thought is was part of their benefits package . 😂
Snitches get stitches !
Maybe Kevin will get a job with Mike?
Kevin in story, not KCE kevin
Yeah swift action…..once they got caught.
Have to wonder who hired this guy.
Yeah, it does make all the new board look bad. You’d think they would be super vigilant on everything knowing eyes are on them. Either they are too dumb or they think we are too dumb.
Jury is still out…
Let’s be fair here..the Board sets policy and procedure. The Administrator runs the day to day and is in charge of employees. I have to defend both for acting swiftly and doing the right thing here. Your statement of the Board being too dumb is unfair. Rita’s email to the Administrator clearly showed this Board will not put up with this kind of thing. You can’t expect board members to know every little nuance of what is going on. Once it was brought to Rita’s attention, it was dealt with. To me her email shows leadership and a commitment to the taxpayers, something we never had before. Maybe you should run next spring and then you can be on the receiving end of comments like yours. I’m thankful to this new board and President for cleaning up and not condoning things like this any longer.
Couple of weeks back I saw a county mowing machine mowing a strip of weeds on a property on Highway 45 north of 50 a ways up.
Seemed to be weird because it was on a crest of a frontage where all the grass below was mowed just fine. My guess, at 55 mph, was that the owner couldn’t or wouldn’t mow that part because it was difficult or even dangerous. So he asked the county to send out the articulated mower on the end of a ditch digger. You know the type. The one that can mow the sides of trees from 30’.
Seemed like a favor that should have been declined.
Some people just feel they can get away with anything.
These are great jobs !
Guaranteed 40 with all the snow plow overtime the winter will give you. Not to mention any summer storm clean ups.
And with the driving from place to place. Usually machine work ! They’re lucky if they actually “work” 5 or 6 hours out of the 8 each day. It’s not like these guys are digging ditches with shovels for 8 hours a day !
Sure it’s manual labor but not like in the private sector.
Exactly. It doesn’t take 5 guys to fill a pot hole: 2 supervisors, one to sit in a truck and one to do the actual work.
Sounds like you know a lot about DPW. Salem Lakes is hiring, the county is hiring, you should apply. Clean things up.
All unions operate this way. WASTE money
Did you call or email KCDPW to ask for details or express concern? Email your county board supervisor to see if they know why? Call or email the county manager for the state highways?
Or did you come on a local news page to run your mouth with bold, and likely inaccurate, assumptions?
Didn’t have time to stop and take pictures. They were gone by the time I came back that way.
Might have been a resident that fell on hard times. Or someone that does things that deserved a little pay back.
Hard to say what the circumstances were.
The reason I mentioned it here was to at least let those in the know that we are watching.
Good— watch.
But don’t start shit where there isn’t shit to start.At least do a tiny bit of investigation before coming in with false statements.
There’s plenty going on in the county, but when you don’t know circumstances & come in hard with accusations of favors- it’s a bad look for you.
They r staggered. There r term limits-vote.. Within is the source of the info.
Huh?
Now I’m going to state my piece so if you can’t handle reading this please don’t. Cause honestly I don’t care to hear what you have to say but, Also I don’t run my mouth about people that I do not know or have not interacted with but what I do know is I sat out side my house and watched two guys that work for the village clear an entire hillside of over growth and dead trees in two days I watched the one worker tip over 8 trees that were no less than 12inches round in the matter of minutes. I can speak proudly when I say I was actually impressed and proud to see how hard these employees were working. But from what I have learned there is only 4 hwy workers on the hwy department that take care of our hwy work/parks out in the village as the comment about the “private sector” I’m pretty sure from what I seen that day these guys would out preform any private sector specially after what I was able to find out about one of them from one of our local establishments.
Your completely delusional, but thanks for the pep talk, you’re the best kind of foot solider. You make me so proud; I know Kamala and Walz’s, right?
As I stated those who couldn’t handle it should not read. But thank you for proving my point By feeling you had to comment like your a liberal key board princess with lack of knowledge. So typical nowadays.
There’s more than 4.
We have the village (or county) clearing trees and brush from private property randomly, albeit in the right of way ? 30’ away from the roadway ?
Out by the Ski Hill comes to mind.
Each of these “Right of Ways” are still property owned by taxpayer citizens. Why not require them to clear these areas if there is some sort of greater need ? And what need is it ?
I’ve seen them come into an older neighborhood and slash not mow 6’ from the edge of the road and then drive away leaving the 1’ tall grass just laying where it was sheared along with it being displaced a foot onto the road edge. Why ?
Making room for snow ? This was in August. All grown back now.
These are properties where the owner may have wanted the vegetation to act as screening. What’s wrong with that ?
Back to the highway 45 cutting. This was up a hillside. No where near any traffic considerations.
And don’t say it was for the electric lines. They trim trees not brush
WTF is that logo on his shirt?
From Antioch Fire Department ??
Must have come from work straight to the meeting.
Can’t imagine a person being allowed to wear that patch if he wasn’t an employee there ?
Interesting 2nd jobs we have here in Salem.
But which jobs are 2nd and which jobs are 1st ?
They r staggered. There r term limits-vote.. Within is the source of the info