The Palm Coast City Council unanimously approved a nearly $300,000 compensation package for incoming City Manager Michael McGlothlin, but not before deleting several clauses from the contract, including a provision that would have made him eligible for additional pay during emergencies.
McGlothlin followed the council’s deliberations on YouTube last night, and told FlaglerLive this morning that “I heard absolutely nothing that gives me any pause.”
“It actually struck a very positive note knowing I’m coming into an organization that not only does due diligence, but also has the resources of the city’s long-term needs and goals carefully considered,” McGlothlin said. “So no problems at all with the changes.”
McGlothlin and his wife Jessica are moving into their Palm Coast home, in the C-Section, next week. McGlothlin will be on WNZF’s Free For All Fridays with David Ayres Dec. 5 at 9 a.m., appearing by zoom.
Mayor Mike Norris, City Attorney Marcus Duffy and Human Resources Director Renina Fuller negotiated the contract with McGlothlin.
“We changed a few things in the contract. Most of the stuff was already in there,” Norris said. “We changed raises for the city manager to separate it from the city employees because the city manager is an independent contractor. We moved that to where it’s performance-based and it’s at the discretion of the council to decide that in a motion and approval up to 2 percent.” A 2 percent raise would still equate to about $4,500, he said.
The base pay of $225,000 a year and the benefits package that brings the compensation to close to $300,000, including full health coverage at no cost to him or his dependents, remain in the contract, as does an annual raise of up to 2 percent.
Three clauses drew council members’ attention, particularly the attention of Theresa Pontieri, a lawyer. All three clauses were amended or deleted.
The first was the clause that would have provided extra hourly pay, at $108 an hour, for every hour above 40 that McGlothlin would have worked during a declared emergency. Pontieri found the definition of an emergency vague, but was also opposed to the provision “on its face.”
The extra pay was not McGlothlin’s idea. The negotiators suggested it–presumably Norris. McGlothlin said he’s never had such emergency pay before in his career. “When it was initially offered it was–ok, that’s a positive, but I also saw the other side of the equation,” McGlothlin said, but he also had concerns about how it would reflect on other employees. The city provides for “emergency duty relief pay” for those salaried employees who are in essence locked in at work by an emergency, past their normal work hours, as when the city’s Emergency Operations Center operates. But it’s not an applicable comparison, some of the council members said.
“Somebody getting a salary of $225,000 plus all of the other bevy of benefits that we have here in this nice contract, I think that that comes with the job,” Pontieri said.
“In the military, we get paid a salary,” Council member Ty Miller, a military veteran, said. “You do 180 hours in a week, you’re not getting paid anything extra. That’s kind of my baseline of how it is. This isn’t a small amount of money that he’s getting paid here, so my initial thoughts are the salary is the salary, and maybe once or twice a year you’re going to have to work a few extra hours when we have an emergency. Hopefully not. But that’s my thinking initially.”
“This is following labor law,” Norris said, incorrectly, as Fuller noted. “The labor law applies to hourly employees, not to salaried employees,” Fuller said.
The clause was deleted.
Pontieri and Miller had issues with contract wording that provided a measure of protection from firing in case the manager asserted that, while he may have erred, he had not acted in bad faith. To Miller, “it seems like a strange set of wording to say: I did something wrong but I didn’t intend to, so therefore I’m not in trouble for it.”
“It basically allows negligent kind of behavior,” Pontieri said. “People get terminated because they make bad decisions. It doesn’t mean that they had a bad intent. But they made some really bad decisions, and I fear that this clause precludes us from terminating with cause because of a handful of really bad decisions. Just because there’s this intent portion written into this paragraph.”
With Council member Dave Sullivan agreeing, the clause was deleted.
Norris took the occasion to address the Charter Review Committee’s proposal to require a supermajority to fire a city manager. “I can say right now that I’m not gonna be in favor of that at all,” the mayor said. “If we have a majority of the council that deems that someone is not fulfilling their duties or doing their job, we should be able to do it without a supermajority.” (The review committee’s proposals will themselves be reviewed by the council before they are either ratified or rejected. The approved proposals will head to the November election ballot as a referendum.)
The mayor also insisted that, as reflected in the contract, the city ends its custom of not evaluating its managers. That custom dates back to Jim Landon who reviled being evaluated and considered the council’s week-to-week employment an implicit evaluation. He finally had an evaluation in the summer of 2016. Other than that one, only former City Manager Matt Morton was evaluated, and only once. (Morton is now the city manager in Palm Bay, at a salary of $240,000.)
“You guys know I hate using the word fair,” Norris said. “But it’s fair, it’s fair, you get evaluated, you know your shortcomings and you move on.” No one disagreed.
“I value him. I’m excited for him to come to the city. I appreciate the evaluation being added to the contract,” Pontieri said.
Pontieri was also uncomfortable with a clause addressing criminal charges. The clause enables the manager to remain on the job, if suspended with pay, pending the disposition of the case. Noting the protracted nature of court cases, Pontieri said that could have the city paying the manager for months. But Sullivan said the council can always terminate with cause, making changes to the clause unnecessary.
“You’re a dope dealer, you’re not working for the city. We don’t have to wait for your conviction. That explanatory enough?” Norris said.
The council did change a clause that removes a 30-day window after the manager submits his resignation. The rewording gives the council the authority to terminate the manager’s service immediately, if still paying him for those 30 days.
Toward the end of the discussion, and after Jeanie Duarte, a candidate for the council in next year’s election, was critical of the pay package, Pontieri addressed the cost directly: “It’s a lot of money, and when you’re looking at the severance and everything that somebody could possibly get, it is quite a bit of money,” she said. “But I think it’s really important to understand that this is a very risky job. I’ve heard it before, and I think from people up on this dais, it could be thought of as a week-to-week position, because you’ve got five people who can vote to get rid of you. So he’s taking a chance on us, and I think that’s really important, particularly when we know three of us won’t be here next year. So we have to make sure that whoever is sitting in these seats thinks very carefully about their decisions, that they don’t make political decisions to terminate a city manager. Termination based in politics is not the right thing to do, and perhaps if they see a high price tag sitting in front of them, they may think twice before doing that.”
Unlike with Morton, who moved from Washington State, the city did not offer McGlothlin any moving expenses. McGlothlin had no issue with it, downplaying the three-to-four-hour move across the state, and saying he was ready to start on Dec. 17. He was only waiting for the amended contract to sign it.
bill says
does he have more or same amount of responsibilities that the president of the United States has just a thought?