BLUFFDALE – Some Bluffdale City Council members are proposing to rename a Bluffdale fire station named after a former fire chief, arguing the change is justified after the former chief pleaded guilty in June to misusing public funds.

However, some residents who support keeping John Calvin Roberts’ name on the fire station have questioned the timing of the resolution, which comes shortly after Roberts was called as a prosecution witness in a criminal case against Jason Cristopher Hall, the husband of Bluffdale Mayor Natalie Hall. He is charged with threatening elected officials – assault, a third-degree felony, and stalking and threatening to interfere with an official’s performance, both Class A misdemeanors.

The proposal comes years after the former fire chief parted ways with the city in 2020 after the city received complaints from whistleblowers who accused him of offering his employees double pay for signing up for holiday shifts by giving them extra days but not requiring them to work. Roberts was indicted in 2022 and pleaded guilty in June to a reduced charge of misuse of public funds, a third-degree felony, as part of a guilty plea. The plea was a suspended plea, meaning the charges could be dropped after three years if he meets several conditions, including paying $10,000 in restitution.

The City Council passed a resolution in October 2020 — several months after the whistleblower’s complaints — naming the John C. Roberts Fire Station No. 92 in honor of the former chief, but is now considering another resolution to remove his name from the building. Some council members said they were unaware of all the allegations against Roberts at the time the building was named and now want to change the name in light of his confession.

“This is a very, very difficult issue,” said Councilwoman Wendy Aston. She said council members initially believed the whistleblowers’ allegations against Roberts related to simple wage discrepancies and payments to suppliers for work that was never completed.

The resolution was adjourned Wednesday evening, but the City Council plans to reconsider the proposal sometime next month.

“Nobody questions whether he’s a good person or not, but people are complex,” Councilwoman Traci Crockett said during the meeting. “He admitted to a crime against the city. That’s a fact. He admitted to a crime. Do all of his good deeds against the city outweigh a crime against the city?”

“We don’t want to drag his name through the mud any further,” she added. “I don’t want to have to keep talking about it.”

In 2020, Roberts finally signed a “separation agreement” with the city that ended his 40-year tenure with the fire department but allowed him to work for the city in a different position in the future. About a year later, when Roberts was running for mayor against Natalie Hall, city leaders issued a press release announcing a new investigation into Roberts’ time as fire chief. Roberts claimed the announcement was politically motivated, citing difficulties he had in staffing the department on holidays.

“The situation is very heated”

Some residents say city officials knew about the allegations against Roberts when they named the firehouse after him and are only now threatening to retract the allegations because Roberts is involved in the criminal case against the mayor’s husband. The resolution proposed Wednesday lists the allegations prosecutors have made against Roberts, and critics say it will enshrine the accusations in the city’s records even if Roberts’ case is ultimately dismissed.

“It’s a very heated situation. The town is very divided, it’s very evident,” Tammy Rasmussen, a longtime Bluffdale resident, told KSL.com after Wednesday’s council meeting. “It was interesting to hear some of the comments there, people saying, ‘Well, we need to get rid of this because it’s going to unify the town,’ which is completely untrue.”

“How can this be considered anything other than a witch hunt?” she added.

Rasmussen and others have acknowledged Roberts’ admitted misconduct, but say his long-standing service to the community makes him worthy of having his name on the fire station.

“You could say it’s not political, but when you look at the facts, look at the time frame, how could it be otherwise?” she asked. “Does he have a right to see his name on a building? I think he does, because I think his 40-plus years of service to the city and the community outweigh that.”

Jeffrey Gaston, a former Bluffdale councilman who ran against Hall for mayor in 2021, accused her and her husband of threatening and harassing him during his campaign. Gaston eventually withdrew from the race due to the alleged threats and decided to support Roberts, who also ran against Hall.

He said Jason Hall attacked him with campaign signs during a city event in August 2021 where he was operating a campaign booth for Roberts’ mayoral campaign. Jason Hall is also facing charges on those charges and is scheduled to face a jury trial in October, where Roberts is expected to testify.

Jason Hall pleaded not guilty to the charges and the mayor defended him, saying she was the one who was threatened and harassed first.

Roberts had previously claimed that the city manager and two city council members gave preferential treatment to Natalie Hall in this election when they announced an investigation into his time as chief – more than a year after officials first received complaints about him.

According to police chief, memorial plaque was removed from fire station

About a half-dozen Roberts supporters attended Wednesday’s City Council meeting to protest the resolution, and one commenter accused city officials of having already removed a brass plaque bearing Roberts’ name from the fire station in question before the council considered or voted on the resolution.

City Manager Mark Reid said he was unaware of the plaque’s removal and did not authorize anyone to take it down. However, Fire Chief Matt Evans suggested during the public forum that the plaque may have been taken by Roberts, but did not provide any evidence to support this.

“We don’t know when the plaque was removed. We noticed the plaque was removed,” Evans said. “There was an incident where John (Roberts) came to the station on a Saturday and took some stuff from the station. Maybe the plaque disappeared then. We don’t really know. … We honestly don’t know where it is.”

Roberts did not respond to multiple requests for comment and was not present at Wednesday’s meeting.

“When the plaque was put up, I saw it was there and honestly I haven’t seen it or looked at it since then until the other day when someone said, ‘So where’s the plaque?'” Reid told the council.

After the meeting, Evans told KSL.com he wasn’t sure when the plaque went missing, but it was noticed “probably six, maybe seven, eight months ago.”

“Unfortunately, we had an incident with the former chief,” Evans said. “He came to the station and took some items that he said were his. We didn’t realize at the time whether the badge was gone or not, so we don’t know.”

He said a police report had been made in the case of the missing items, but did not know any details. Evans initially said Roberts visited the fire station this summer – several months after he said the plaque was first noticed missing – but said, “I can’t tell you what day it was” when asked about the time frame for the plaque’s disappearance and Roberts’ alleged visit to the fire station.

He later said it had been “a while” since Roberts came to the fire station and estimated it happened sometime this spring.

What happens next?

The City Council ultimately deferred the resolution to rename the firehouse after Councilman Steve Austin expressed concerns about approving it without the full council present – Councilman Alan Lord was absent. The resolution was originally scheduled to be heard by consensus on Wednesday night, meaning the council could vote without public input, but it was placed in the normal business plan at the start of the meeting.

“Personally, I don’t feel ready to make a decision on this,” Austin said.

At the start of the debate, Aston said council members could “vote today, or we can take this back and bring in the district attorney to present the entire case. If we want to go in that direction, we can do that and we will present it. … I don’t think that’s very fair to John.”

Members therefore agreed to reconsider the resolution during the first meeting in September and hope that Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill will be willing to present the details of the case. Mayor Hall advocated holding a special meeting if Gill is unavailable during the regular meeting time on September 11.