Lakeland board argues about city manager’s job performance and their role in it

Conversations got heated Thursday night as Lakeland’s Board of Commissioners picked apart the city manager’s job performance in a public work session marked by irritation and accusations.

The Jan. 8 discussion devolved into a meandering trail of internal board and mayoral criticisms as they discussed the work of the city manager, Chris Thomas. Accusations of bullying, micromanaging, intruding on other people’s jobs, misplaced priorities, inaccessibility and more volleyed back and forth for more than an hour before the board agreed to take up the discussion again at the Jan. 20 business meeting.

Commissioner Clark Plunk got the ball rolling when he brought the main topic to the agenda.

“Obviously, I’m not happy with the performance of the city manager,” Plunk said. “He makes too many mistakes.”

Problems cited

Prompted by the mayor to provide specifics, Plunk listed his five primary criticisms of Chris Thomas’s job performance during 2014, his first year in office:

♦ MISMANAGEMENT OF THE CITY’S GARBAGE CONTRACT

Plunk said he trusted the city manager to take care of the contract and ensure Lakeland kept the same level of service.

“I didn’t really realize what was going on until we had already signed the contract,” Plunk said.

Back in May, Thomas recommended Republic Services of Memphis for the city’s trash pickup services, based on its lower bid and its good references. After listening to two bidders, the board agreed that Republic’s bid seemed like the best choice. However, the choice became unpopular because of changes to the contract (larger recycling bins that are only picked up every two weeks instead of weekly, as well as stricter limits on yard waste pickups).

Thomas agreed at the Jan. 8 work session that he made errors on the contract, relying on information from former staff members and erring by allowing the contract to include bag limits. However, he said he corrected the problem with a loose-leaf collection program, and he plans to negotiate a better contract in the future. After the meeting, he also noted that the recycling program has quadrupled its capacity this year.

While taking responsibility for the contract’s flaws, Thomas also reminded Plunk that a commissioner is responsible for reading and understanding contracts and being responsible for how he votes.

♦ POOR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CHAIN OF COMMAND

Plunk told other board members, “I never could get this through to him that the Board of Commissioners, we run the city, not the city manager.” Then he looked at Thomas and added, “I could never get that through to you. We own the bus, and all you do is drive the bus. I never could get that through to you.”

Thomas agreed that he does work for the board, but the commissioners’ role is not to run the city.

“Y’all are the legislative body that hired one person — that’s me — to run the city,” Thomas said.

He said his job requires him to respond to directions from the board as a whole, implementing their policies, resolutions and ordinances. He also listens to ideas and requests from individual members but takes that input as recommendations, not strict directions to follow.

Thomas also has talked with other city managers to clarify the role. He said the board is supposed to set visions and policies, and the city manager and staff are supposed to implement them. However, some board members have been more “hands on” – such as meeting with contractors about things the city manager and his staff are handling or telling Thomas which city employees need to handle certain programs.

“The thing that is hard for me and will be hard for the next city manager is the fact that the city manager is the one that is supposed to run the city,” Thomas said.

He fears future problems if there is not a mutual understanding of the city manager’s role.

“I’m afraid, whether I’m here or not, if you do not allow the city manager to do their job, it’s not going to be good, Thomas said.

Mayor Wyatt Bunker, who also has taken the city manager to task a few times in previous meetings over the past year, supported Thomas in the discussion and gave an example of how some board members have tried to micromanage him: He recalled talking with Thomas once when vice mayor Sherri Gallick arrived and interrupted, saying the city hall’s receptionist needed to wear a magnetic name badge. Thomas agreed to look into the idea and determine the receptionist’s preference. Gallick prickled at the response and said she might bring it before the board for a vote.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that before,” Bunker said. “We’re a legislative body, a part-time policy-making body. We don’t have anything to do with operations. I don’t know if I would even recognize that as a legitimate item on our agenda. But that’s the kind of stuff — the badgering — the city manager has lived under with this crew. … Completely out of line, completely out of whack with how this city is set up.”

Bunker summarized, “The city manager runs this city, and we guide it through legislation. If you feel like he’s failing to do the job, that’s your prerogative. You can vote on it. You can dismiss him. But I’ll tell you what you’ve done this year. I’ve seen it. I’ve had a front-row seat. And if you treat anybody else — anybody else — like you treated him, they probably aren’t going to stick around.”

He added that he knows who some board members are hoping to install as Thomas’s replacement, and he believes the new guy won’t stand for the same treatment.

♦ EXCESSIVE PRIVILEGES

Plunk accused Thomas of getting a new city car as his “first priority,” along with getting an office and requesting an assistant. Plunk did not think that squared with the city’s lean management style.

Thomas said the assistant would not have been for his exclusive use and could have served multiple city functions.

He also said driving a fancy new car definitely was not his first priority in office. He drove one of the city’s existing vehicles, an old beat-up Chevrolet Cavalier that had more than 100,000 miles on it and which was starting to develop problems, for several months. The city also had four or five other rundown vehicles not being used, so he proposed selling them and using the proceeds to buy a newer functional vehicle that he and other city employees could use. It effectively cost the city zero.

Plunk also took offense at the fact that Thomas asked Commissioner Torrey for suggestions and then did not follow his advice to keep one of the city’s cars. The response from Thomas was that the board was divided, so he picked the option that made the most sense to him. Thomas also said he was not strictly required to get the board’s permission on a decision of that financial size, but he chose to seek their input.

Bunker added that it made sense for the city to sell the older cars not being used, reducing the city’s fleet size and cutting insurance costs.

♦ UNWILLINGNESS TO MEET WITH COMMISSIONERS

Plunk complained that Thomas has not talked with him individually in at least three months, aside from greetings at public meetings — no invitations to meet at the city manager’s office and no invitations to lunch.

“You never include any of us in anything,” Plunk said.

Not so, according to Thomas. He said he reached out to Plunk on a regular basis and specifically asked for a meeting when he heard that some board members were unhappy with his performance. Thomas said both Plunk and Commissioner Gene Torrey refused to meet with him except at the board meetings.

Bunker also reminded the commissioners that he asked for a board retreat in late July 2014 to address the city manager’s performance issues, but the majority of the board had no interest in participating.

Plunk said they didn’t want to attend the retreat because of frequent confrontations with the mayor. Bunker, however, said mid-year would have been a good time to mend any broken fences.

Bunker also suggested that the city manager meet individually with the commissioners, but he said only Gallick met with Thomas. Thomas said he even asked the city attorney to set up the meetings with the other commissioners, but they refused to participate.

♦ FAILURE TO HIRE A SENIOR CENTER COORDINATOR IN A TIMELY MANNER

Plunk said Thomas resisted the board’s direction to hire a coordinator for the Lakeland Senior Center.

Thomas said he didn’t act because the board as a whole was split on this decision and he didn’t see it as a good use of the city’s money. He reminded Plunk that he did hire a coordinator after the board passed a budget that included an appropriation for that person’s salary.

Other criticisms

Torrey listed two additional complaints about Thomas, without providing specifics: Working with just a few members instead of the whole board, and failing to maintain confidences.

“I really feel that the issues that face Lakeland, near-term and mid-term, require and demand the best managerial skills that we can get,” Torrey said. “I do not feel that the current city manager has that capacity.”

Gallick has previously complained in a board meeting that the city manager did not speak to her with the same respect he gave to male commissioners. At the Jan. 8 meeting, she only complained that Thomas had forwarded one of her emails without permission.

Bunker said the email in question didn’t reveal anything secret or confidential, and it included a question that Bunker could answer. So Thomas forwarded it to the mayor, who answered the question. Bunker said this did not happen on a regular basis.

City manager’s overall response

Thomas listened to all the critiques and then said he loves the job, his staff and the city, and he’s gotten great responses from citizens and developers who appreciate the direction of the city and the work of the new board and the city manager. He acknowledged mistakes and mentioned correcting them.

He also said it was unfair to evaluate him with a vague “you didn’t do a good job” observation when no goals or objectives were set for him during the first year of his employment. He also said the city is busy with school district expansion and growing interest from developers, and it could be a poor time to make a change.

He offered again to sit with each commissioner and the mayor to receive concrete feedback and talk about the future of the relationship with him. He asked them to set a vision for either him or the next city manager they choose. Otherwise, history will repeat and they will be dissatisfied again in a year, he said.

“We can correct all this. I mean, we can if you want to,” Thomas said. “But if not, when the time comes, I’m not resigning. I’ve done nothing wrong. I made mistakes. But I care about this city. I’m a resident.”

He continued, “I care about these employees. You talk to the employees. Feel free. I’ve had them tell me, ‘Chris, you’re a great boss. We now love coming to work. We used to backbite and go after each other all the time — that’s gone.’ You want to disrupt that? Okay. I mean, my words may be falling on deaf ears, but I’m just sharing my heart with y’all. Because you have someone that cares.”

Board squabbles

For the rest of the discussion, board members and the mayor had pointed criticisms of each other.

Gallick referred repeatedly to the discussion’s drama and the fact that it wasn’t a popularity contest or about personalities, and she also mentioned bully tactics and political theater, apparently in a criticism of the mayor.

Bunker denied using drama or bullying tactics, and he said Gallick only wanted to allow her side of a discussion.

Plunk said the mayor’s last comment itself was an example of bullying.

Bunker said a legitimate discussion requires the board to air out its differences. He said he has given examples of incidents he witnessed, outlined facts as he recalled them, and didn’t hear any disputes.

Torrey took umbrage at how Bunker started the entire discussion (questioning Plunk to clarify in what direction he wanted the discussion to go). Torrey said, “I think a review is warranted, and I think to question the fact that we’re having a review is unwarranted.”

Bunker said he was not questioning the commissioner’s right to review the city manager; his questioning of Plunk was to elicit some concrete points for discussion.

Both Gallick and Bunker worked last year on setting up an annual review template for the city manager’s job performance but said other commissioners did not bother to participate. They dropped their efforts after board members said they were concerned about the review being so public.

“And so it died on the vine,” Bunker said. “It didn’t appear there was majority support for an annual review.”

Plunk criticized the mayor, saying, “I think Chris would probably have done a lot better job if you hadn’t been so involved in trying to run the city and trying to be the city manager.”

Bunker denied Plunk’s allegation that the mayor went office to office to interview each city employee and told a couple of them they would be fired if they didn’t do their jobs better.

Instead, the mayor said he took about four employees out for lunch and individual conversations before he took office. He said he wanted to get to know them and mention he had heard about previous issues with performance, attendance and timeliness. He cautioned them that the new board would provide accountability they had not experienced in the past.

Bunker said there is a lot of paranoia about his influence at city hall, but the employees there will bear witness that most of his calls are just to pass along citizens’ complaints and requests that he receives.

“The reality is that I haven’t had much influence at all over the city manager,” Bunker said. “Not hiring decisions. Not firing decisions. I gave my opinion on some things when asked, and some happened and some didn’t, but never did I ever demand that any of my opinions be carried out.”

Thomas backed up the mayor’s comments, first saying he appreciates input from Bunker, who helped him get the job and who is a longtime friend. However, Thomas added that he makes his own decisions in his role as city manager.

Bunker provided an anecdote about how his work as mayor sometimes intersected with the city manager’s job as the mayor tried to respond to citizens’ inquiries. He said Thomas decided to remove a median at the front of Sterling Place last January at a resident’s request. Bunker only knew about it because he heard Torrey discussing it with a city employee, but he got complaints on the first day of the work from residents objecting to the median’s removal.

Bunker talked to Thomas and Torrey, who said the city attorney advised a median can be removed if it was a hazard, and that the attorney had identified it as a hazard. The mayor called the attorney, who clarified that he did not declare the median a hazard.

Bunker called Thomas back and told him some people had threatening to sue. He said they could win in court if the median was not properly declared a hazard, so he advised Thomas to get a traffic study from the city’s engineering firm. The engineer then found that the median was, at worst, an inconvenience and not a hazard for the resident who prompted the removal process. The median removal process was stopped. Bunker said the citizen happened to be a friend of Torrey’s, but Torrey said he was not involved in making the median removal request.

Commissioner Randy Nicholson eventually asked all to return to the topic at hand – reviewing the city manager’s performance as noted on the agenda.

Bunker agreed with Nicholson, but he also saw a hidden agenda in the board’s discussion of Thomas’s performance. “The reality check here is that the most honest they’ve been is when they said, ‘Your influence over the city manager has been a problem.’ And so this is about trying to diminish my influence over city hall and take it out on Chris by changing the city manager.”

Bunker continued, “I was told multiple times through the school deal, and since, that I dictate what goes on at city hall. That’s what this is about.”

A guest’s view

Shelby County commissioner Heidi Shafer was present for another matter at the acrimonious Lakeland board work session, but she spoke up briefly about the board’s passionate discussions.

“Your job, I know, is very, very difficult and there are a lot of things that sometimes the public can look at as being fighting, but what you’re really doing is you’re having a contest of ideas, and you’re trying to flesh out all the different pros and cons to get the best decision for the people,” she said. “And I really want to commend you for the time you put in, because I know it’s a lot.”

Written by Carolyn Bahm, Express editor. Contact her at (901) 433-9138 or via email to bartlett.editor@journalinc.com.