Shannon Metty selected County Manager

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

Planning Official Shannon Metty is now officially county manager. After months of performing the job on an interim basis while the recruitment and hiring of a person for the position was in process, the commission ultimately decided to hire in-house.
By a 4-1 vote on Thursday evening, Dec. 15, the Jefferson County Commission chose Metty to fill the county manager position. She was one of five persons shortlisted by the Florida Association of County Managers (FACM) as the top candidates for the commissioners’ consideration.
The other four were Larry Jones, Charles Jackson, Louis Goodin and Ron Russo.
Chris Holley, the consultant whom the county hired several months ago to help the board navigate the recruitment and selection process, presented the
shortlist, noting that all told, 17 individuals had applied for the job.
“Tonight, you’re at the point to make some decisions,” Holley said. “It’s up to the commission where you want to go. You can pick any number of these applicants that you want to interview. Or if you don’t like any of them, we can go back to the rest and bring some others forth. There were two applications that came after what I’ll call the soft deadline. The position is open until filled, so those two last applications can now be considered.”
The five names before the board, Holley said, were the top choices of the FACM committee, the group that the commission also hired to help recruit, screen and recommend applicants.
Commissioner Austin Hosford was the first to speak. He noted that he had reviewed all the applications aside from the two that had arrived late at least twice each and had been particularly impressed by three of the candidates. He named these as Metty, Jones of Walton County, and Goodin of Hamilton County.
“I would like to see at least these three candidates interviewed,” Hosford said.
Commissioner J. T. Surles’ list of possible candidates was much shorter, by his own admission.
“It was really a two-horse race in my opinion, with Ms. Metty and Larry Jones,” Surles said. “But I’ll be fine with also interviewing Louis Goodin.”
Commissioners Eugene Hall and Stephen Walker said they had no problem with interviewing the top three candidates mentioned.
It was Commission Chairman Chris Tuten who overturned the apple cart, in terms of his readiness to dispense with the interviewing process.
“Ms. Shannon made the top of all of our lists, and to me, she’s the clear choice,” Tuten said. “She’s been doing the job for two years now. She knows the county and she lives here. I just think she’s the best option to keep this county safe and protect us from what she knows we’re going through.”
With that Walker moved to appoint Metty and Surles seconded the motion.
Hosford asked, and Holley confirmed, that the county had paid the FACM committee $5,000 to help with the recruitment and selection process.
“So we’re $5,000 in to get to this list,” Hosford said. “I think we would be doing the county a disservice without interviewing the candidates that we paid to be put forth.”
Unbeknown to Hosford possibly, or at least not mentioned, was that Holley himself was paid a consultant fee for his service.
Paul Henry and Chuck Sarkisian, the two citizens who addressed the commission, spoke on opposite sides of the issue.
Henry cautioned the commission to follow the established process to avoid giving the impression of bias and ensure for the transparency and uniformity of the process.
“There’s a process involved here, and when we don’t follow the process, that’s when we can get into trouble,” Henry said.
Sarkisian reminded the board of Metty’s prior two-year internship with the county for no pay.
“She’s accepted everything that you’ve thrown at her,” Sarkisian said. “Ask these other applicants, if they’re willing to work for even four months for zero pay and show us what they can do. Of course, they’re going to decline. But Shannon has already done that. I want you not to forget it, because these things have a way of not being recognized.”
Asked if there was any legal liability to the selection decision being made that very evening, County Attorney Heather Encinosa said it was up to the board’s discretion to make the decision.
Hosford’s was the dissenting vote in the decision to hire Metty. Although he believed that she would do a good job, Hosford said he still felt that it was a disservice to the county not to interview the other candidates.