Bronson Councilman Berlon Weeks suggested a transfer of money to create a city manager’s position.

By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Bronson Town Council members postponed a decision Tuesday on whether to transfer $94,650 from the inactive Bronson Parks and Recreation budget to create a city manager’s position.

            City Councilman Berlon Weeks, who has been lobbying his fellow board members for close to a year to hire a city manager, felt he had devised the perfect solution for funding the new position.

            He said the money sitting in the parks and recreation budget was no longer being used by the town to fund a BPR director’s job or the town’s recreation program, so why not harness the money to fund a city manager.

            Mayor Beatrice Roberts and Councilman Robert Partin weren’t comfortable transferring the money out of parks and recreation for the purpose of hiring a city manager without checking with their accountants first.

            Roberts won council support for her suggestion to contact the city’s auditors, Purvis and Gray, as well as Beauchamp and Edwards, a Chiefland accounting firm, to find out if they believe the money transfer would be legal.

            Beauchamp and Edwards was the accounting firm that helped steer the town’s administrative staff back to solid footing after the previous clerk resigned and left the town with bookkeeping headaches.

            Weeks was under the impression that the entire parks and recreation program budget wasn’t being used for recreation anymore and was available for the city manager position with a simple transfer from one part of the budget to another.

            Partin wasn’t as certain about whether the city would need some of that money for park maintenance. Weeks argued park maintenance has been traditionally funded through public works.

            The accountants and auditors can answer those questions.

            Weeks believes the city needs a strong administrative leader with clearly defined job duties to manage the staff and the budget. The town currently has no city manager nor does it have a job description for one.

            Weeks has argued that the town will never have a professionally run Town Hall until an experienced city manager takes over and manages the staff and budget in a way that moves the town forward.

            The town council decided a couple months ago to disband BPR and transfer former BPR head, Curtis Stacy to public works. Stacy is the town’s new public works director and by all accounts, he is doing well. His new job description as director was approved by the council Tuesday night along with the job description of Nikki Keller, the town’s utility clerk.

            Some of the public works director’s administrative duties performed by former director Erik Wise have been temporarily assigned to Town Clerk Shirley Miller, Deputy Clerk Melisa Thompson and Administrative Utility Clerk Nikki Keller.

            The roles of code enforcement officer, utility billing, reporting and administration that were previously part of Wise’s job, are temporarily assigned to the three clerks.

            The fact that Stacy isn’t doing those administrative jobs gave rise to a discussion about how much time should be given to learning the additional administrative responsibilities.

            Councilman Jason Hunt felt Stacy was doing a great job as public works director but he needed to show he was progressing toward taking on the administrative functions.

            Hunt suggested giving Stacy a year to learn the new skills but someone else felt it should be two years. Partin was ready to just adopt the new job description without placing any deadlines for learning the administrative duties.

            Partin’s motion to approve the job description without any deadlines passed on a 3-2 vote with Weeks and Hunt opposed to the motion and Partin, Roberts and Councilman Aaron Edmondson supporting it.

            Stacy said he was willing to do whatever it takes to carry out his job duties and was willing to learn the administration portion of the position as long as he had enough time to grow into the job and knew what the council was expecting of him.

            Stacy said he didn’t want to be set up to fail by having job requirements that were unreasonable or weren’t clearly defined in his job description.

            He has no deadlines for learning the administrative functions of the public works director but he will eventually be expected to take over some or all of those duties.

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Town of Bronson Regular Meeting February 18, 2020; Posted February 18, 2020