Marathon City Council Member Robyn Still joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
The city is looking for a new city manager after George Garrett was terminated at the last council meeting.
Still said, “Basically, the motion was made last city council meeting to add a performance review to our agenda of that evening of the current city manager, George Garrett. That went pretty quick from a performance review into immediately a motion for termination. I tried to talk council members into postponing the discussion. Obviously, we needed to have a discussion, because there were some feelings about termination, just kind of thought the public needed to be present or be noticed about it, in case they wanted to make comments for or against that kind of decision. But however, that didn’t go the way I wanted it to. A motion was made for termination, and there were three votes to terminate. The council members who voted and who made the motion were well within the rights of George’s contract to do that. He could be terminated without cause or with cause, and the vote was to terminate him, regardless of my personal feelings for or against that, we have to support that vote, because that was the vote of the council. And now we need to move on, and we need to begin a search for the next city manager. Right now, our city attorney, who is more than capable, is our interim City Manager, which really loads his plate. He was already very busy. He’s got us well taken care of right now, but this is definitely a short term solution.”
What happens next with the city manager position?
Still said, “What I’ve been told by the city attorney is city staff is working on writing a more modernized job description for the city manager. I think that’s important. I think it’s important to consult with city staff. They deal with the city manager on a day to day basis. They see the public’s interactions, also a lot more than council members sometimes. So they kind of know, in this day and age, what we need for a city manager, what qualifications, things like that. And it’s my understanding that our interim city manager is going to present some of that to us at our next council meeting, which is coming up in a couple weeks, and then we’ll have a discussion about what we like about that job description, what we don’t like about it. If there’s more qualifications that council’s interested in, add that to it. If it’s not already added, I’ve already been thinking about what I’d like to see in our next city manager. There are big shoes to fill, but we have to move forward. So I know there was a lot of people upset about the decision, but I’d just like to urge everybody to let’s come together. Let’s put that behind us, because that is behind us now, and we need to move forward, regardless of how we feel about the vote, one way or another, the most important thing is Marathon. So I urge people to come to that city council meeting and to follow the city’s Facebook page. Also, we have a newsletter that you can sign up for to get news. It’ll tell about what’s happening in the city. It also lists the agenda of the upcoming meetings once those agendas are published. And I just urge the public to come to these meetings, especially if we’re going to be talking about our next city manager, because whoever that person is directly impacts every single one of us.”
Could there be possibly a standardized procedure for performance reviews going forward?
Still said, “We have to, as council kind of own some of that. We’ve not ever really done them in public, performance review of our city manager or city attorney, and maybe going forward, we need to look at that for an annual review and have it at a council meeting so we can set expectations, say what they’re doing well, what we’d like to see improvements, if there is any that way, whoever that person is knows where they stand. They know what the expectations are. That’s a decision that would have to be made amongst council, obviously, but I think we probably do need to have a more robust performance review in the future.”
A special call meeting on the 24th saw the purchase of a truck.
Still said, “We needed a truck with a crane. For our public works department, that was pretty necessary, pieces of equipment. And then we had a presentation about safer streets, that initiative that we’re working on. There was a lot of discussion about bikes and E bikes and lighting some of our walkways. Aviation was one of them. So we should see a plan moving forward. I think that’s going to be at our next council meeting. I haven’t seen the agenda, but it’s my understanding that there will be a list of priorities for safer streets. And I know that there was a big discussion about bikes and the E bikes during the workshop.”
Is there a time frame for getting a new city manager in place?
Still said, “There’s not a time frame right now. Obviously, the sooner we could do that, the better. But we want to be able to make a good decision on who that person is. We don’t want to hire somebody and then realize that that’s not going to be a good fit. So while the first reaction is we need to find somebody right now, we need to find the right somebody that’s going to be the most important thing, and that might take some time. Thankfully, Steve Williams, our city attorney, who’s wearing double hats right now, is extremely capable, so we are in good hands. We have great city staff. So the city of Marathon is fine right now, but we do need to find somebody. There’s a steep learning curve, even for a council member, I can only imagine for a city manager, and George had vast knowledge of all of these projects that are going forward. And George cares about our community, and I have a feeling that if we had a question, he would answer it.”
There were a number of events in Marathon recently.
Still said, “Our community events committee with the city is doing so many wonderful events that are free to our community. An event this past weekend, it benefited Presents in Paradise. That was Saturday night, and they transformed the tiki hut and oceanfront park into a skating rink. That was an awesome event, and if anybody wants to see the amazing skills of our interim city manager and city attorney, there is video of him skating. Our wonderful fire department was was on scene, just in case, but it seemed like everybody had a wonderful time. I’ve heard a rumor that that may be coming back, in case you missed it. But pay attention our Facebook page, because our community events committee is doing so many and they’re doing so many fun outreaches, the food truck Jamboree, all of this stuff.”
Traffic can sometimes be an issue while projects are worked on.
Still said, “Thank you for everybody for your patience with the traffic. We suffer with you in that traffic where we’re down to the one lane, but unfortunately, that is a necessity, and it wasn’t the city’s decision of when that project began. We were having to wait, just like everybody else, on permitting and DOT when they released that permitting, that’s when we started the work. We’re on a federally court mandated timeline to get that deep well completed, and it wasn’t obviously ideal time for anybody, including the city. And like I said, we are suffering right along with everybody else as we sit in traffic, but everybody’s being thankfully patient, everybody’s being polite and letting folks merge over. Let’s just keep that up and we’ll all get through this.”