By REID TUCKER
Former Interim City Manager and Airport Services Supervisor Kelly Schultz got the recommendation of current City Manager Sara Bowers to fill the vacant planning director position.
That recommendation eventually got the nod from the Council as well on the night of its Feb. 23 meeting, but it took some doing before calling for question.
The ranking committee, headed up by Bowers, awarded Schultz top spot among the six planning director applicants, three of which had the qualifications the city was looking for. Schultz earned Bowers’ recommendation for the job over the course of two interviews based on her qualifications and previous planning experience as well as what Bowers described in a memo to the Council as “excellent people skills and familiarity with the city.”
Before the Council members could put the recommendation to the vote, City Attorney Clayton Adkinson advised them that, after conferring with city staff, he undertook an investigation to determine whether a member of the committee had been asked to change their vote in the ranking of applicants. This turned out not to be the case, as all rankings remained the same throughout the process, and with Schultz still as the number-one selection. However, Councilman Mac Carpenter, who first brought a possible error in the selection procedure to Adkinson’s attention, spoke up, saying the perception of an error in the process was enough to warrant starting over from the beginning.
“We need to back up and start over,” Carpenter said. “I want to make this clear: it has nothing to do with any of the applicants. I’m not trying to micro-manage this. I’ve made it very clear that I have not injected myself into this process, and I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding by anyone that would suggest that I have, because I have not. I think there’s enough question about (the process) that we need to start over.”
The rest of the Council was satisfied enough, and the board returned a 4-1 vote in favor of hiring Schultz as planning director, a position left unoccupied since the previous holder of the position, Greg Scoville, was fired in late 2012 for failure to comply with a random drug test. Carpenter cast the nay vote on the basis of his argument that there was a problem with the ranking process.
The specter of possible procedural problems once more reared its head later in the meeting, with citizen Shayne Betts taking the Council to task over a lack of processes to ensure that the city keeps tabs on its finance department. What sparked the complaint was the bill the city received from auditing firm Tipton, Marler, Garner & Chastain for an additional $44,124 needed to cover the additional work the firm did on the Fiscal Year 2013 audit. The whole issue of the extra work needed to fix the audit, which amounted to an unexpectedly lengthy process of reconciling financial statements, ultimately resulted in the firing of former Finance Director Thomas Carman last month.
For her part, Betts said that if fellow DeFuniak resident J.B. Hillard had not brought the situation of Carman being behind on his audit prep the Council would not have been aware of the problem.
“If the Council is the one responsible [for oversight of the finance director], you failed us citizens,” Betts said. “Mr. Hillard is the one who brought this to the attention of the Council or I absolutely believe we’d still be going through it.”
The finance director is required to report to the City Council but, as Carpenter pointed out, the ordinance regulating the position says the city manager is responsible for making the Council aware of the finance department’s activities. Nevertheless, City Clerk Loretta Laird said every member of the Council had at some time offered to get Carman help with his audit preparation should he require it, but he declined.
It was thus that Councilman Ron Kelley found Betts’ complaints against the Council to be “subjective.” Taking care of the city’s finances was Carman’s job and he didn’t live up to that obligation, which led to his termination, Kelley said.
“It wasn’t necessarily Ms. Bowers’ job, or mine, or [Councilman Kermit Wright’s] or anyone else’s,” he said. “We tried to help [Carman] both publically and privately. All the outrage I hear is directed toward the Council. However, Mr. Carman bears a great deal of responsibility for not doing his job. Unfortunately Council had to finally intervene when all we got was excuses we had to take action and we did it as quickly as we could.”
Betts countered, saying everything adds up to the city lacking procedures to provide what she called “checks and balances” on the finance department. She said the Council ought to institute a policy of regular checkups on the department if it is to avoid a repeat of the situation.
After all was said and done the Council members voted 5-0 in favor of not paying this overage, as there was no provision for additional work included in the agreement between the city and the auditing firm. The originally agreed-upon amount for auditing services was $65,325, but the letter from Tipton, Marler, Garner & Chastain includes an amount due of $184,023. This amount was reduced to $110,414 – a combination of the original $65,325 and the additional fee of $45,089 – of which the $44,124 remains to be paid.
Adkinson opined that, seeing as the agreement contained no provision for additional charges, the city does not have a solid legal obligation to pay anything over the original amount for auditing services, though the Council’s decision not to pay doesn’t stop the auditing firm from trying to collect.
“They can try,” Bowers said.
Finally, the Council returned a 5-0 vote in favor of passing the ordinance to place the mayor’s right to cast a tie-breaking vote on a voter referendum to go before the electorate at the upcoming city elections set for April 14. However, the board voted 4-1 in favor of removing language that would also eliminate the mayor’s veto power if the referendum passes. It was argued that the ability to veto a decision made by the Council doesn’t, strictly speaking, lend itself to Sunshine Law (that being the Florida law regulating open meetings and public information) violations.
The referendum was first proposed by former Mayor Harold Carpenter, who thought citizens would be better represented if the mayor, not having the ability to vote under any circumstance, could safely talk city business with Council members outside of public meetings.
