The Mehlville Fire Protection District Board of Directors gave tentative approval last week to hiring an employment consultant to perform a management audit and cultural analysis of the district.

Board members voted unanimously Friday to accept a proposal from McGrath Consulting Group Inc. of Wonder Lake, Ill., pending the approval of a contract. As proposed, McGrath Consulting’s fee of $42,725 would include the management audit, cultural analysis, a management questionnaire, travel and miscellaneous costs.

McGrath Consulting is a public-safety and human-resource consulting firm with clients throughout the United States.

Tim McGrath, who holds a doctorate degree, is president of McGrath Consulting and has more than 33 years of experience in public safety and 11 years as a consultant. He also is a retired fire chief of two departments — Gurnee, Ill., and Brookfield, Wis.

Victoria McGrath, who holds a doctorate degree, is chief executive officer of McGrath Consulting and has more than 18 years of experience in both the public and private sectors in the field of human resources and has been a consultant for eight years.

She has been the human-resource director for the city of Brookfield, Wis., and assistant human-resource director for the Elmbrook School District in Brookfield, Wis.

The Board of Directors voted unanimously June 5 to issue a request for proposals for an employment consultant to perform a management audit and cultural analysis of the district.

McGrath Consulting submitted the only response to the board’s request.

The board in April initiated an investigation into “workplace intimidation and harassment” and the board’s decision to hire an employment consultant is related to the probe.

During Friday’s meeting, Board of Di-rectors Chairman Aaron Hilmer said, “… This came up as we’ve been doing our investigation into the workplace harassment and intimidation.

“We felt it would be money we would rather not spend, but thought it would be well spent to bring professional, outside help to ensure the fire district is providing a safe, hostile-free work environment for its employees and employer. This is not only essential to both of those, but also to the residents we serve.

“When a workplace has a corrosive environment or culture in which fellow employees aren’t respected or are harassed, it will eventually spill over into the services we provide. So that’s absolutely unacceptable. It will not be tolerated,” he added.

Hilmer noted that the district’s legal counsel, Mathew Hoffman, had performed a lot of “legwork” over the past few weeks and found only a very small number of consulting firms that specialize in working with fire districts and fire departments.

In separate interviews, both Hilmer and Hoffman told the Call that because the board was seeking a consultant to perform professional services, it was not legally obligated to issue an RFP.

“Even though we didn’t have to issue a request for proposals, we still felt that would be the best thing to do. Since this is a professional service, we’re not legally bound to bid it out,” Hilmer said.

Hoffman said, “We were, of course, hoping for as many responses as we could get, but it is a very specialized area and not only did we issue an RFP locally, but we contacted firms nationally.”