Ward 2 Councilman Joseph Mickens said at Tuesday’s city council meeting he was sick of waiting on the hiring committee to get a chief operating officer in place.
After questioning the process, he unsuccessfully tried to hire someone right then and there.
The city has been struggling since last year to fill the positions of COO, chief financial officer and information technologies director. A hiring committee, composed of Mayor Keith Gaskin, Human Resources Director Pat Mitchell, and Ward 1 Councilwoman Ethel Taylor Stewart, Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene, Ward 4 Councilman Pierre Beard and Ward 6 Councilwoman Jacqueline DiCicco, was formed and directed to come back to the council with four finalists for each position.
That isn’t what happened, however. After receiving more than 100 applications for the three positions — including some who applied for both the CFO and COO position — the hiring committee narrowed the field to two finalists for COO. One of those finalists withdrew, leaving only one in play. The top choice for CFO also dropped out.
Tuesday night, Mickens demanded to know what was going on.
“I’m disappointed in the hiring committee,” Mickens said. “We set standards and guidelines before the process got started for how this was going to go. None of those guidelines (have) been followed.”
Beard said there was one person on everyone’s list for the COO position, but he admitted the committee was “back to the drawing board” for CFO.
Mickens asked Mayor Keith Gaskin what he thought the next steps would be.
Gaskin said the committee had been considering rewriting the job descriptions to suit the top two candidates and “play to their strengths.” The committee would have requested increasing the CFO’s salary due to the candidate’s experience, but that person has pulled out of consideration.
“We still have the COO person we were looking at, and we have adjusted some of the job responsibilities,” Gaskin said.
Gaskin said he had gotten as far as submitting a rewritten job description to City Attorney Jeff Turnage and Mitchell for review before the preferred candidate backed out. He also said he had suggested increasing the pay for the CFO position, because Columbus’ pay scale is less competitive than other communities.
Greene moved to raise the salary range for a hybridized CFO job (that would “support the COO”) to $80,000 to $120,000 to try to attract better candidates.
Current pay rates set COO at around $79,000 and CFO at about $75,000.
“All these ideas are speculation,” Stewart said. “…The COO should be qualified for their job or they shouldn’t be in the job. We need a COO and a CFO and each of them to do their job.”
Mickens just cut straight to the chase and moved to hire Jammie Garrett for the COO position. Beard offered a second.
“I’m not waiting no more,” Mickens said. “(And) get me a CFO here by the 15th. We can’t keep waiting around. It just keeps getting pushed back.”
“We haven’t had the candidates,” DiCicco said, then began questioning Garrett’s experience.
“You all put her in the top four, that tells me she’s qualified,” Mickens said of Garrett.
Turnage interrupted, urging the council to go into executive session if they were going to talk about specific people.
Beard moved to go into executive session, seconded by Stewart. Mickens’ hiring motion was never put to a vote in open session.
According to the unofficial minutes, the council voted to bring Garrett to town Friday for an interview with the full council.
Mitchell would not release any information on Garrett, including qualifications or where she resides, by press time.
Facebook comments on the city page
Joyce Doughty — the former administrative assistant to Mayor Robert Smith — spoke to the council about moderation of comments on Facebook posts during citizen input.
She said she, and several other people, had had critical comments on posts on the mayor’s Facebook page deleted. She told the council that it was illegal government censorship for that to happen, and said it was “biased” and destroying the relationship between the mayor and citizens.
The most recent incidents happened on the condolence post on the passing of former Councilman Fred Stewart. Doughty said attorney Nicole Clinkscales had pointed out that the dates listed in the post for Stewart’s tenure on the council were incorrect. That comment and subsequent ones disappeared.
Public Information Officer Joe Dillon said that the entire post had been taken down and a fresh post put up in its place. The only time Facebook comments had been deleted were when they were threats, he said.
Turnage advised it was legal to disable comments on all posts to the city’s Facebook page, making it “information only.” That spurred a motion from Greene, with a second from Mickens, to go that route.
The council deadlocked, with Mickens, Greene and DiCicco voting in favor and Stewart, Beard and Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones voting no. Gaskin broke the tie with a “no” vote, allowing comments to continue.
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