Fired groundskeeper standing his ground

IT'S AN UGLY SCENE at a beautiful site.

The way it looks to Mark Tinneny, he tried to do the right thing by blowing a whistle on a suspected drug deal, then lost his job and is confined to his home, from which he faces eviction on Monday.

Tinneny lives in the 19th-century Weil house on the property of the nonprofit Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Roxborough. SCEE is 340 rolling, wooded acres with a goal of connecting urban dwellers with the natural world.

That doesn't include using or buying pot, in the view of 42-year-old Tinneny, a former grounds-keeper who is holding his ground.

He reported a fellow employee buying what Tinneny insists was a bag of pot at SCEE on June 26, 2014.

"He is a well-known pothead," Tinneny says.

I'm sitting with Tinneny in the living room of the Weil house, which is not air-conditioned, on an oven-hot day. His golden retriever, Duke, has his big head in my lap. On a counter are the microwave and hot plate he uses to cook because the kitchen floor is rotted out.

He was upset because the transaction happened near SCEE's preschool facility and because after he alerted management (and the police), he says, nothing happened.

It was not the first complaint he made at SCEE.

In January 2014, he claimed Tom Landsmann, a member of the board of trustees, repeatedly berated him in the presence of other employees, and told Tinneny, "Don't be such a p----," which the former Marine took to be homophobic. A short time later, he filed a complaint with the state Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and when the tortoise-like agency didn't act, he filed suit in Common Pleas court.

SCEE Executive Director Mike Weilbacher tells me what Landsmann said "may have been bad judgment, maybe worse than bad judgment, but not harassment. It was dumb name-calling."

With the complaint filed, Tinneny went about his business - until he saw, and reported, the suspected drug deal in June 2014.

Tinneny was fired two weeks later. It was over the phone, says Weilbacher, because the grounds-keeper resisted his invitation to come into the office, adding the dismissal had nothing to do with the drug allegation, which he believes to be baseless. Weilbacher says he began investigating the complaint, but "Mark pre-empted the process" by sending a mass email, which "violated protocol." That and other insubordination led to the dismissal.

Each side is charging the other with defamation.

Tinneny began picketing SCEE in June, carrying signs warning parents of the suspected drug deal, urging people to "ask to see the police report."

There is no "police report," other than Tinneny's email to a police tipline, says Weilbacher. That is a police report, retorts Tinneny. A police investigation yielded no arrests.

His picket signs accuse SCEE of not acting on his drug tip and of putting children at risk.

SCEE got an injunction banning him from protesting or picketing on its grounds. Tinneny moved his picketing to outside the front gate.

Built into the injunction issued by Common Pleas Judge Nina Wright-Padilla was a peculiar caveat: Tinneny was granted only "vehicular ingress and egress from the Weil house" where he lives.

Tinneny's Chevy pickup doesn't run and I wondered if the judge was aware that her order makes him a prisoner. Judge Wright-Padilla did not respond to calls and emails over several days.

How do Tinneny, and Duke, "the only thing that keeps me sane," he says, remain in a house owned by his former employer, essentially making him a squatter?

Like everything else, this is disputed.

He had a lease, which was extended verbally by his former supervisor, Tinneny says.

Weilbacher says, "That's not true," adding that Tinneny has not paid rent for a year. Tinneny says the house, which is not up to code, should not be collecting rent, that SCEE does not have a required rental license.

Weilbacher replies SCEE now does have the required paperwork and if it's not up to code, "then he should leave."

He won't, not voluntarily. Monday he will be in court fighting eviction.

Phone: 215-854-5977

On Twitter: @StuBykofsky

Blog: ph.ly/Byko

Columns: ph.ly/StuBykofsky