• West-siders love their chili? St. Bernard City Hall is across the street from Chili Time Restaurant.

        • German? St. Bernard's mayors sound like the organizing committee for the first Oktoberfest — in Bavaria.

        • Proud? St. Bernard City Hall looks new, but it's 30 years old. “We take care of it,” Mayor Barbara Siegel explains, as if it's not obvious.

        • Honk if you love porch geese? St. Bernard has life-size sculptured dogs.

        • And thrifty? St. Bernard is so tight it's scandalous.
       

Sniffing a scandal

        A TV crew once dogged city garbage crews as they picked up discarded Whirlpools and Frigidaires, and used the scrap metal profits to take city workers out to dinner. Well, true. But city officials say they used the income only for retirement parties and donations to needy families. Just thrifty.

        A sheriff's investigation in 1999 found city property was “borrowed” at a cottage owned by city Service Director Ray Schrand.

        No charges were filed, because the monkey bars, slide and lawn chairs were old “garbage and junk,” Mr. Schrand said. City workers and service clubs were invited to “Camp Schrand” to use it, he said. Thrifty.

        He was told to return the stuff — including a leaf-blower, chain saw and laptop — and never do it again, Mayor Siegel said. “I would have had a fit if I had known about it,” she said.

        Mr. Schrand says he's learned his lesson. “But it just keeps jumping up.”

        There's another cliche: West-siders don't forget.

        St. Bernard fireman and paramedic Bob Hausfeld has a multimedia presentation on “corruption” at City Hall. He has tapes of meetings, a slide show of the missing playground equipment and armloads of documents.

        He says city Civil Service rules were rigged to hire the son of the Civil Service chairman, by awarding extra military service points he didn't deserve.

        He has requested documents; the city says they don't exist.
       

Family ties

        Mr. Hausfeld is a man on a mission, and he's not alone. Several of his friends and neighbors turn meetings into litigious nightmares for city officials. “There's always been political feuds in this town, but never to this extent,” said Mr. Schrand.

        That brings up another West-side value: The family that's elected together is protected together.

        Mayor Siegel's brother-in-law was the service director who got in trouble over the scrap metal deals. Mr. Schrand says “Camp Schrand” was set up by his city-worker father. The Civil Service director's son was indeed hired. And Mr. Hausfeld's father, a former mayor, ran against Mayor Siegel twice and lost. She says the feud is political payback.

        Whew. You get the picture. Like reruns on TV:All In The West-side Family.

        One side says corruption, the other says dirty politics. I think they're both right — and wrong. And the picture that emerges is one they wouldn't want on a postcard: If you want a job at City Hall, you need the right St. Bernard pedigree.

        E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.

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