By REID TUCKER
It’s one down, two to go for the DeFuniak Springs City Council after the board conducted one of three scheduled interviews with candidates for the vacant finance director position.
The Council was set to interview all three of their top picks for the job at a May 25 special meeting, but of the three only Paula Smith (who received the most number-one votes in the pre-interview evaluation process) was able to attend. Joe Brown, the number-two choice, couldn’t make it to the special meeting due to an emergency at home in Tennessee, while Carol Smith, the third pick accepted a job offer in the meantime and thus rescinded her application with the city of DeFuniak Springs. The Council members agreed to set up an alternate interview date for Brown and to bump up the fourth candidate on the list of finalists to third spot and to conduct interviews with these two before making a decision about a hire.
Smith, who lives in Jackson County, has 20 years of accounting experience, having worked in both the public and private sector over the course of her career. After putting in six years with the state Department of Transportation she went on to work for two different manufacturing companies before spending the last six years at a CPA firm in Marianna. Despite her wealth of experience, Smith didn’t hold back with her appraisal of what she could bring to the table as finance director of DeFuniak Springs, which would, if she is hired, be her first assignment in municipal government.
“I think I can bring my knowledge and still grow a lot,” she said. “You’re offering a position that would be an opportunity to grow my knowledge.
“I can come into this position with the knowledge to learn everything that needs to be done….Can I walk in and hit the floor running? Probably not. I’ve got a lot to learn, but I’ve got the skills to get there.”
City Manager Sara Bowers, herself the city’s longtime finance director before being promoted to her current position, asked most of the questions during Smith’s interview. The majority of those questions related to the city’s requirements for its finance director, which include the usual things like submitting financial reports, reconciling bank statements, recording journal entries and providing financial analysis, but also involve assisting with customer service. Smith was unfazed by the breadth of those tasks, even relating an anecdote describing her toughest time dealing with the public.
Turns out that Smith learned the majority of her customer service skills at her college job in the pressure-cooker environment of the fast food industry.
“You wouldn’t believe how difficult people can be when they’re hungry and want their coffee,” she said.
Smith also has experience in budgeting, which she got from working as an accountant with the engineering department of Russell Athletics’ Marianna manufacturing operation and at Green Circle Bio Energy in Cottondale. Due to that private sector experience, Smith said she was comfortable with applying cost-savings measures wherever possible if hired to work for the DeFuniak Springs. Finally, the sheer number of accounts under the city finance director’s purview was not something that had Smith worried due to up-to-date experience handling the multitudinous accounts of a funeral home conglomerate through her job at the CPA firm.
Some areas where Smith said she didn’t have as much experience were financial analysis with regard toward investments and the rules and regulations governing municipalities, this being the first time she’d interviewed for a municipal government position. Smith said she would rely on her staff members, many of whom have been with the city for years, to help her in the transition to the job of finance director.
“Coming into a position like this, my immediate staff would be my backbone,” she said. “The only expectation I would have for them is to help me learn the stuff I don’t know.”
Councilman Kermit Wright wrapped up the board’s questions for Smith by asking if she was willing to learn and master the city’s system – a system which he said “totally defeated” the last two finance directors. Smith replied in the affirmative, stating her intent to treat being the finance director “like a job and not like a position.” Experience in the classroom and even with other employers only prepares one to learn a new organization’s methods, she explained, but she is ready to do just that if hired.
“They can teach you the way it’s supposed to be done, but until you get inside that organization you don’t know how it’s going to be done,” Smith said. “I think I have the knowledge, and I would welcome the challenge to learn how the city of DeFuniak Springs does [its] accounting.”
Prior to the interview with Smith, the Council conducted a brief special meeting at which the members returned a unanimous vote in favor of approving negotiations with the city’s new auditing firm Saltmarsh, Cleveland & Gund. The firm will provide auditing services for fiscal years 2014, 2015 and 2016, with the amounts charged for each coming in at $62,000, $63,860 and $65,775, respectively. The agreement stipulates that the above fees assume that “unexpected circumstances will not be encountered during the audit,” but Saltmarsh, Cleveland & Gund agreed to discuss a new fee estimate with the city if extenuating circumstances do arise and additional time is needed to prepare an audit.
The Council also presented its 2015-2016 budget workshop schedule, with the first workshop being set for Tuesday, July 6 at 6 p.m. The workshop will focus on preliminary discussion of revenues and expenditures and a presentation from the city police department along with discussion about renewing the water works management contract with CH2MHILL.
