By REID TUCKER
The members of the DeFuniak Springs City Council did not take long making a decision after interviewing finance director candidate Joe Brown, quickly returning a 5-0 vote to offer him the job.
Brown, a 15-year resident of Memphis, Tenn., and a longtime employee with the Shelby County Trustee’s Office, was extended an invitation to come on board with the city of DeFuniak Springs at a specially convened City Council meeting held Monday, June 15. Brown will bring with him 30-plus years experience in the accounting and finance fields, having worked in local government in Tennessee for most of those years. His current duties with the Shelby County Trustee’s Office have his department collecting property taxes and allocating those monies to the county’s seven different school boards as well as working with state government and local municipalities on various sales tax-related assignments.
Though the Shelby County Trustee’s Office is small, Brown said, he and the few other members of the staff are responsible for a gamut of other tasks, ranging from reconciling individual bank statements and elected officials’ separate accounts to recording journal entries. This ability to cover a wide range of jobs was of particular interest to the City Council members, as the city’s finance director frequently needs to do all the above tasks while also doing such things as helping utilities customers and providing financial analysis for investments. Despite his broad range of experience in all aspects of accounting and finance, Brown readily admitted he would be willing to get help from DeFuniak Springs city staff when he needs it.
“I know I don’t have all the answers,” Brown said. “If it wound up being a problem trying to adapt to a new system I would definitely not hesitate to ask for help.
“There is bound to be some things that work here that probably wouldn’t work in Memphis, and there may be a few things from up there that might work here that we can adapt and make work. I would certainly be flexible enough to work with the staff here to be as efficient as we could be.”
It became clear over the course of the interview that, in addition to being no stranger to the demands placed on a small and busy department, Brown is also accustomed to rapidly changing work situations. Furthermore, Brown has supervisory experience within his department, and the Council members were impressed by his stance on progressive discipline, cross training and the development of and adherence to written policy procedures. Finally, requests from other departments within the Shelby County government, including the aforementioned school districts means he has a good handle on the interworking of municipal, county and state governments – essentially all the things he’ll need to know getting right to work in DeFuniak.
“I’m not sure that there’s a day recently that I’ve planned on the drive what I was going to do that day that I’ve been able to actually do all of it,” Brown said. “You just have to prioritize based on importance. It’s a constantly changing situation.”
Although he has lived in Tennessee for a while, Brown has several Panhandle connections. He attended high school in Panama City Beach and his son and daughter-in-law live in Pensacola. Brown said he expected there to be no problem selling his home in Memphis and moving to DeFuniak Springs, though he will most likely not be able to come on board with the city until either mid-July or the first of August.
The City Council members were in agreement that both Brown and Paula Smith, the first candidate interviewed for the finance director position, were good fits for the job, but they leaned more toward Brown due to his broader range of experience dealing with local government finance. The board members also appreciated that Brown was more up-to-speed on the workings of DeFuniak Springs’ local government, leading them to conclude he was the more prepared for a position of this level. Councilman Mac Carpenter said he’d like to find a way to hire Smith at some point down the road as she too would be an asset to the city.
Brown and the Council negotiated the terms of his employment only a short while – his desired salary of $70,000 being the same salary as the previous two finance directors’ starting pay. Brown said he would look over the employment benefits package in writing before delivering a final confirmation in the morning, and a phone call right before press time confirmed he had indeed accepted the job.
