By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Part 2 of 2
Williston Mayor Charles Goodman says despite claims being made by the city’s resigned deputy city manager and human resource director Deanna Nelson, he never asked her or City Manager Jackie Gorman to halt making changes to city government.
In her allegation-ridden Aug. 29 letter of resignation, Nelson said the more she pushed to end the culture of non-compliance and non-conformance with policies at City Hall, “the more pushback, hostility, and pugnacious the work environment became.” She accused Goodman of trying to halt making changes.
Goodman said her allegation is a lie.
“I, at no time, told the city manager or her assistant to halt making changes. I went to them because they were making so many changes and my words, which I could not record were, “You’re the city manager, not me, it’s your decision, but consider if you go at people and you change everything at once, people are going to get upset. You can’t fix everything that you think is wrong,” he said. “So, think about it, fix one thing, let them get used to it being fixed, then fix another thing and give people a chance to understand what you’re trying to do.”
“That’s me telling them to halt? That was a lie. I was trying to help. If someone is struggling, help them, and I never told them what to do. I have no authority. I’m very clear on that. I sat down in my office and tried to help by asking her to consider and that’s the extent of that comment. I wasn’t telling them what to do. It’s just not true.”
Nelson’s letter suggested she was being bullied and retaliated against in the city, and due to this hostility, she and Gorman decided not to attend an Aug. 17 special meeting and have been working at home since that time. Jones denied she and Gorman were being bullied and retaliated against by employees, saying, “and if anything, she was doing it to them, and not necessarily them, but the lower ones.”
Goodman, City Council President, then Deputy Police Chief Terry Bovaird, Police Chief Mike Rolls, Fire Chief Lamar Stegall, Utilities Supervisor Donald Barber, and Public Works Director Jonathen Bishop were interviewed by Spotlight as a group about many of the allegations made in Nelson’s Aug. 29 letter. City Manager Jackie Gorman and Nelson have resigned.
Bovaird said he found Nelson to be somewhat confrontational at times.
He said he has been employed in much larger organizations than the City of Williston, and in all the other work environments, he said the human resource manager was there to help employees. When an employee had a question about what is right or wrong, the HR director was there to help the employee and would explain the difference between state and federal laws that apply to a particular situation. He said the HR director would say whether the law prevents or allows something. The intent was to help people.
“The times and the dealings that I’ve had with her (Nelson) when she’s been somewhat confrontational and said no, you can’t do that, and I said where does it say I can’t do that, she refused to look it up or give that information to me or tell me where to go find it,” Bovaird said. “She simply said you can’t do it. When we questioned her about what federal law says or even what the HR manual said, at one point she even said, well, “this thing should be thrown out.”
Jones added to what Bovaird said.
“My comment to that is if she doesn’t like the HR manual – she cuts it down and cuts down the policies – she says this wasn’t being done and that wasn’t being done. She was here for quite a while, why did she not change them, why did she not bring us proposed changes? Many times, we told her to bring it to the council and we’ll consider it. Never brought. I think she brought Juneteenth (a federal holiday) and that was it,” Jones said.
Bovaird said it is difficult to make employees feel good about themselves and what they do for the city with Nelson’s style of leadership in HR.
“Our job is to make the staff underneath us feel wanted, feel protected and we value them and what they do here is great and wonderful things and it’s hard to do without any resources to back up that decision and you can’t do anything about that when HR says, that’s not the way it’s done. I’ve never seen any HR director do that. I’d been in some very large organizations. HR should help the staff, not hurt the staff,” Bovaird said.
Gorman’s promotion of Nelson to deputy city manager was questioned by many employees. The HR manual requires vacant positions to be advertised within the ranks of city employees to give them first shot at applying for a vacancy. Gorman promoted Nelson to deputy city manager months after the position was vacated by former Deputy City Manager and utilities Manager C.J. Zimoski. The vacancy was never advertised to city employees internally. Gorman said the promotion was within her authority as the manager of the city.
Jones said the promotion was based on Gorman’s interpretation of the human resource manual.
“Yes, it was Jackie’s opinion that it was a promotion, not a new position and she didn’t have to post it,” Jones said.
Question: But there was no HR director to consult with, correct? That’s because the HR director was the one being promoted.
“I agree,” Jones said. “That was Jackie’s position. We debated about it many times.”
Barber said Gorman claimed that under the HR manual that department heads could be promoted without advertising internally. He said that interpretation is why she said she had the power to promote Nelson without advertising the position. Barber said Gorman believed the positions held by lower-paid union employees would have to be advertised internally but management employees were exempt. He said he wasn’t concerned about that, he was clarifying.
“That was Jackie’s opinion and we debated on that too,” Jones said
Goodman said he talked to Gorman about Nelson wearing two administrative hats in city government – HR director and deputy city manager – and how it raised a red flag for many in city government.
“It seemed to me to be a red flag because now what, you’re HR director is now your manager. How can you respect somebody that wears two hats? It’s not humanly possible to be the HR director and the next second to be the deputy city manager. She (Gorman) was adamant she had made the decision. I just told her to consider it. I even wrote her a letter asking her to consider making adjustments for the betterment of the city,” Goodman said.
Jones said it was Gorman’s decision to choose Nelson as deputy city manager, not the city council’s decision.
Question: But when the incident occurred where Nelson charged at Fire Chief Lamar Stegall in a staff meeting on July 20 and went nose to nose with him meant employees couldn’t go to discuss the situation because the HR manager/deputy city manager was involved in the confrontation. City employees couldn’t very well go to the HR director to file a complaint?
“That’s the problem. The same thing happened to that gentleman, the same thing happened to me,” Goodman responded.
Jones said it wasn’t quite as bad with Goodman because Nelson wasn’t in his face.
“I’m talking about separating HR and the city manager,” Goodman responded.
Stegall did file a complaint with the city alleging a hostile work environment. The complaint was never formally investigated. Gorman tried to hire a family law attorney from Ocala to act as a mediator but the $2,000 mediation session was never held. Gorman had authority as the city manager to handle the investigation herself and discipline or fire Nelson. When the city heard there was movement toward Nelson leaving the city, Jones said the mediation issue was dropped.
“At that time, we had already heard there was movement to relieve her of her job. I for one couldn’t see continuing with the mediation. That would have cost the city money when we knew she would be gone,” Jones said
Question: So, there were rumors she would resign?
“That too and I knew the council wanted her gone,” Jones said.
Nelson’s resignation letter said she emailed Jones and asked her why the city council was already planning to terminate her before she resigned. A motion had been made to fire Gorman and Nelson at a special council meeting, but the council never acted on the motion. It was never placed on the agenda for the next council meeting. Only Gorman had authority to terminate the deputy manager, Jones said. Nelson questioned in her letter why Jones never responded to her email asking why the council wanted to terminate her.
Jones said her decision not to respond to Nelson’s email with an email of her own was based on the fact that Nelson and Gorman had already sent a lawyer to the special council meeting to represent them.
“The attorney came instead of them. They sent their attorney and that’s one reason we stopped talking to them. When you show up in a room with an attorney, you put me on notice,” Jones said. “She (Nelson) sent me an email and said I did not respond. I’m not putting an email back to her. I called her and talked to her for an hour and a half. She didn’t put that in her letter.”
Nelson also complained in her letter about the lack of documentation in the official records for the eVerify system to check whether employees were legally in this country. She said eVerify records (called I’9’s) weren’t organized or maintained.
Jones disputed the claim. She said when she and Latricia Wright first received Nelson’s resignation letter they sent the letter to council members. Jones discussed the allegation about I-9s with Wright.
“Latricia said I know we’ve got I-9s. I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Jones said.
Wright found I-9 forms in books that were listed in alphabetical order.
Stegall added that the police and fire employee packet for new hires contains an I-9 form.
Nelson’s letter of resignation was far too long and contained far too many allegations to address all of them in two news stories. It was an extraordinarily aggressive resignation letter.
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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt September 1, 2022; Posted September 12, 2022
