FOLIOAfter press time, the Fernandina Beach City Commission voted unanimously to hire former Fernandina Mayor and City Commissioner Joe Gerrity as the city’s new city manager. Before the formal vote, commissioners chose Gerrity in a paper poll by a 3-2 margin. Once it was clear he would be hired, Commissioner Tim Poynter and Arlene Filkoff said they wanted to also vote for Gerrity so that he came to the job with the unanimous support of the City Commission.
The city of Fernandina Beach has a well-deserved reputation for grinding through city managers. It became something of a local joke when, in 2001, the city lost its seventh manager in seven years. With the growing roster of former city administrators, a Rotary Club member quipped that a new chapter forming in 2001 would be named “The Former City Manager Rotary Club.”
The turnover has slowed somewhat in recent years, but the drama hasn’t abated. After Michael Czymbor resigned under protest in January, the task of hiring his replacement fell to the most rancorous City Commission in recent memory. Led by a three-member voting bloc, the commission seems bound and determined to hire former Mayor Joe Gerrity for the job. Although Gerrity was eliminated from consideration by a consultant the city retained to evaluate the 93 job applicants, his name was subsequently reintroduced by three commissioners, and he appears poised to get the position. (A City Commission meeting on the matter was scheduled for May 12, after Folio Weekly’s press deadline. Interim Manager David Lott is also in the running.)
A longtime resident of Fernandina Beach, Gerrity served on the County Commission himself for nine years, including stints as vice mayor and mayor. He earned his B.A. in political science with a minor in public administration in 2008, and worked from April 2010 until February 2012 as Suwannee County Coordinator. But Gerrity never really left Fernandina Beach. He kept his homesteaded property in town, and continued to track local politics, including scathing op-eds in the Fernandina Beach News-Leader criticizing Czymbor, and urging voters to elect a fresh slate of city leaders in November 2011. Regarding Czymbor, he argued commissioners were addressing only “the symptoms, not the problem, which is the failure of the city manager to do the job he was hired to do.” Gerrity added, “He does a great job of raising taxes and fees, and creating new ways to tax our citizens, but that is not a manager’s job.” Two commissioners tacitly endorsed by Gerrity’s editorial advocating “change” were elected last year. During their campaigns, Sarah Pelican and Charlie Corbett pledged to fire Czymbor. He resigned before that could happen and now those two, along with Commissioner Jeffrey Bunch, seem inclined to hire Gerrity.
The hire would contravene the recommendation of Paul Sharon, a retired town manager with more than 30 years experience, who was provided by International City/County Management Association as a free consultant to aid the hiring process. Gerrity didn’t make Sharon’s list of top 10 finalists or even his top 20, because he doesn’t have enough experience.
“Mr. Gerrity, in my judgment, fell short in relevant actual experience,” Sharon said in an email to Folio Weekly. Sharon says he also advised the city not to hire a local, because locals would be too entrenched to serve everyone equally. And he specifically cautioned against hiring anyone who’d previously served in public office, because they’ve already taken positions on political issues facing the city.
But commissioners voted to disregard Sharon’s recommendations, and instead scheduled a special meeting on April 24, at which each commissioner brought a list of their own six finalists. Commissioner Tim Poynter suggested they at least limit the applicant pool to people who’d worked for five years or more as a city administrator, but Commissioners Pelican, Corbett and Bunch rejected the idea.
“This whole thing is a ruse,” says Poynter, noting that Pelican, Corbett and Bunch also refused to allow public comments during the recent discussion of the hire. “I’m sorry, but he ran franchises for McDonald’s,” says Poynter of Gerrity. “It doesn’t take a whole lot of brains. They tell you exactly what to do, what to sell, how to make it and the price. I’m not insulting Joe. I’m glad he was a success. I just think the city can do better by hiring someone who is competent at the job at hand.”
Gerrity did not return calls for comment.
Former City Manager Robert Mearns is also critical of Gerrity. When reached at his new job as city manager of Fort Walton Beach, Mearns recalls frequent clashes with then-Commissioner Gerrity. In 2004, Mearns even wrote a complaint that he thought Gerrity violated the city charter when he tried to interfere in the city administration by pressuring Mearns to fire the police chief. Mearns says he was appalled, too, when Gerrity, as mayor, began dating Mearns’ secretary.
“I thought that was extremely improper,” he says, noting that it amounted to the boss dating a subordinate.
Mearns is equally troubled by Gerrity’s public campaign against Czymbor. As Suwannee County’s chief administrator, Mearns says, Gerrity was required to forgo participating in certain aspects of public life in order to appear professional. Wading into the Fernandina Beach political fray is one of them. According to the International City/County Management Association’s code of ethics, professional city/county managers should “refrain from all political activities which undermine public confidence in professional administration, [and] refrain from participation in the election of the members of the employing legislative body.”
Mearns says Gerrity’s poison-pen op-eds clearly violate that guideline. “That’s bad,” he says. “You don’t do things like that. Why go around undermining somebody? I just don’t get it.”
Gerrity’s public service time in Suwannee County wasn’t free of controversy, either. Though his contract required him to move to the county within six months, his declared primary residence, according to Homestead Exemption guidelines, remains in Fernandina Beach. Gerrity also made headlines in the Suwannee Democrat newspaper when it was discovered that the commission chair had granted Gerrity a 4 percent raise, even though commissioners decided not to give raises to department heads. The paper further reported that the chairman hid the expenditure by taking it from the general fund, rather than listing it in the budget.
Gerrity resigned from his job in January when commissioners decided to advertise for the new job of county administrator, rather than simply promote him. Gerrity said he was “insulted” and “offended” by the slight.
Poynter says one of the reasons he wouldn’t vote for Gerrity is because his every move will be viewed through a political lens of favors and paybacks. Already, there are rampant rumors that Gerrity has a hit list of people he will fire if he’s hired, including six department heads. Mearns says he’s heard from a number of city employees asking for letters of reference. And several employees have said if Gerrity is hired, they’re as good as gone.
“My concern is not only if he gets it, but what about the next time?” asks Poynter. “Who would apply to work in this place with the hatchet job that’s been going on?”
Former City Commissioner Ronnie Sapp, who served for 24 years, isn’t surprised by the dustup. Rather, he suggests that it’s time people understand the job of city manager as the dicey, high-stakes political role that it is.
He says some people apply for the job thinking Fernandina Beach is a quaint town on the Atlantic Ocean that would be an idyllic place to live and work. But often they don’t realize how tough it is to negotiate the local landscape until they’re in the middle of it. “If you come to Fernandina Beach and you want to be city manager or get elected to the City Commission, you have to understand that Fernandina Beach is a highly charged political atmosphere,” advises Sapp. “If you don’t understand that, you are in for the shock of your life.”
Susan Cooper E
sceastman@folioweekly.c
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