Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
In the words of Mayor Julie Conley, the Monticello City Council has formulated “the beginning of a plan” to replace City Manager Raymond Clark, who has tendered his resignation, effective June 30.
That plan entails reaching out to former City Manager Steve Wingate, to see if he is willing to serve on an interim basis until the position is permanently filled, and also reaching out to a consultant to help the council through the process of attracting top-notch candidates for the position.
This was the outcome of a special one-hour meeting that the council held on Wednesday evening, June 2, to decide how best to proceed with filling the vacancy created by Clark’s unexpected resignation.
The discussion never touched on Clark’s reasons for resigning, other than that the latter plans to leave city employment completely.
Conley noted at the start of the discussion that the city was undergoing a great many changes, including significant investments in the commercial and residential real estate markets. Which changes she characterized as a good thing that was bringing new faces, new perspectives and new revenues to the city.
The American Rescue Plan, she said, was also presenting new opportunities for the city, as well as challenges, in terms of how and where the money could be spent.
“We need to operate with a long-term plan,” Conley said. “It’s time to hire a new management professional who will raise morale, create a spirit of teamwork and have strong administrative and communications skills. We’ve never tried to hire a professional before. This is new territory for us.”
She turned the presentation over to City Attorney Bruce Leinback, who said he had been in touch with the Florida City and County Management Association (FCCMA), and more specifically with Jim Hanson, a retired city manager who was willing to help the city with its applicants search process.
Leinback noted that when he had been city attorney for various other municipalities in Florida and labor union disputes and other similar matters had come up, he had always dealt with a city manager, who in turned had dealt with the council.
City managers, he said, were trained to deal with a variety of issues, including budget preparations, administrative duties and overseeing departments.
The way it now worked in Monticello, he said, was that the city clerk performed a great many of the functions that a city manager should rightfully do.
The bottom line, Leinback said, was that the FCCMA had a program that assisted municipalities of less than 10,000 people with the process of finding a qualified city manager. Furthermore, he noted that Hanson, who lived in Atlantic Beach, Fla., was willing to travel up and help the city with the process for a minimum cost of mileage expenses and possibly an overnight stay in the town.
Hanson, he said, would help the council set up the job requirements, help set up the interview process, vet the candidates if the council liked, and the council would have the final say on the selection.
“This is what a search firm would do, but without the expense,” Leinback said.
Councilman Troy Avera supported the idea.
“I agree that the city has changed substantially,” he said. “And so what we do also has changed substantially. We need someone with a broader outlook than before, because we’re growing and continue to grow.”
The discussion diverted into the need for whomever the city hired to have knowledge of public utilities and how such systems operated. But it was the consensus in the end that the city manager needn’t have hands-on knowledge, but rather a general understanding and the ability to hire key people who were licensed and knowledgeable in the particular operations.
As Avera put it, “The city manager doesn’t need to know how to turn a wrench, but he does need to set up a bank of qualified people who do.”
Councilman George Evans agreed, warning that the council shouldn’t lose itself in the weeds. The important thing, he said, was to find a qualified candidate, and the rest would take care of itself.
“We don’t want to get too far down in the weeds,” Evans said. “We need someone with foresight and who doesn’t have clicks or group that will make them shortsighted. Sometimes in Monticello, we put people in places just because we know them and they are detrimental to the city and county. Even some of my friends are in places I wouldn’t want them in. We have a lot of people in positions because of who they know. We need to bring in someone with the right qualifications.”
In the end, the council agreed to raise the position’s salary to $75,000 annually as a starting point. It also agreed to have Leinback reach out to Wingate to find out if the latter was willing to undertake the job on an interim basis and what he expected for compensation. And it instructed Leinback to reach out to Hanson and set a meeting with the council later in the month.
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