Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene said he regrets walking out of a special-call city council meeting Friday, forfeiting his vote to hire for two key city positions.
His frustrations, he said, got the best of him.
“I’ve got to do better because this isn’t going to be the last time I’m disappointed,” Greene told The Dispatch on Monday.
Greene left abruptly toward the end of executive session discussions in the City Hall conference room, after making an impassioned plea to hire the internal finalist as the city’s next fire chief. An external hire could result in a “mass exodus” from the department, he warned, loud enough for a Dispatch reporter to hear that part of the conversation through the conference room door.
After Greene’s departure, remaining council members voted 3-2 to hire former Starkville Fire Chief Charles Yarbrough. The council also moved forward on hiring a human resources director, pending salary negotiations, and readvertising for a court administrator.
By the time the fire chief hire came up on the agenda, Greene said he had already “become very discouraged” by the interviewing process for all three open positions. He claims the process has been too slow and inefficient, with communication often inconsistent and unclear.
For example, Greene said he didn’t know the council planned to vote to hire anyone Friday or he would have stayed. Ward 4 Councilwoman Lavonne Harris, who did stay and voted against hiring Yarbrough, told The Dispatch she thought the meeting was simply to discuss the finalists and had no idea it would include voting to hire anyone.
“We don’t have an organized plan for anything,” Greene said. “This court job has been open for nine months. We knew the fire chief was going to retire … seven months ago. And HR as well. Now, we’re just finally scrambling at the end.”
Another position, city planner, was placed in this fiscal year’s budget. It’s been advertised and applications submitted. Yet, no one has been interviewed.
“Is that not irony?” Greene said. “… It’s a perfect example that we can’t get our act together.
“There is no urgency,” he continued. “There’s nothing until we just get down to say, ‘We really have to do something.’ … We’ve got to … have some kind of plan, talk to each other, and get some organized consensus of how this is going to go. Right now, we’re just winging it, and it’s not working.”
Plus, three internal candidates at CFR weren’t interviewed for the chief’s job, although two met the minimum requirements. Greene said he was “in the dark” on that until after city administration had already eliminated those candidates.
Ward 5 Councilman Gary Jefferson, who voted with the majority to hire Yarbrough as fire chief, said he knew it was possible the council would vote Friday. He agrees with Greene, however, that some of the process was “questionable.” For one, he thinks all the internal fire chief candidates should have been interviewed.
“I don’t know about the (candidate) elimination that had already been done,” Jefferson told The Dispatch on Monday. “We waited until the last month or two until we started kicking the ant bed, and it was already pretty much time to take action.”
But as a first-term council member, he said he looks to veteran members Greene and Vice Mayor Ethel Stewart, of Ward 1, for some guidance on processes.
“They’ve been here the longest,” Jefferson said. “So, in some processes, they should say, ‘This is the way we normally do it or what we have done in the past.’ That don’t make it right, but it gives us something to go by. If we were passionate like we were at the end from the beginning, then I think things might have been different in some of the stuff that went on. … If we feel there’s a different or better way we should be doing things, then we need to sit down and come up with a better plan – and that’s from the council and the administrator.”
Jones: Let me do my job
For Mayor Stephen Jones, much of the strife some council members feel in the employee hiring process comes from them not understanding their role.
“Because they want to run the day-to-day,” Jones told The Dispatch on Monday. “(But) just like I say about any department head, I’m going to allow them to do their job, and if they don’t do their job, I’m going to hold them accountable. Allow me to do what the people elected me to do, and if I’m not doing it or it’s not moving forward the way you think it should be …, then we can discuss it.”
The council should not be heavily involved throughout the process of hiring city employees, Jones said. Instead, there should be a council-appointed hiring committee that vets applications and identifies qualified candidates.
The council, he said, should help on department head level positions to help interview finalists.
In the case of fire chief, HR director and court administrator, Jones said the administration winnowed out unqualified candidates and tried to involve the entire council in all the interviews.
Even so, he believes the finalists – and the picks – for fire chief and HR were “top candidates.”
Since none of the court administrator applicants had court experience, the council opted to try to entice a better pool by upping the salary range.
No matter how long it takes, Jones said he favors hiring the right people over just filling positions.
“As long as we get qualified people, whether it takes one month, six months, nine months, whatever, my job is to make sure we have professional, qualified people running the city,” he said.
Greene still believes an internal hire would have been better for continuity and morale in the fire department, but he said he respects the council’s decision.
“This really doesn’t have anything to do with the fire chief,” he said. “I lost this battle. I didn’t agree with it, but I wish him luck. I hope he is extremely successful, and I hope all of our firemen stay and are happy.”
Still, if Greene had been there to vote, not only would his position been on record, it would have tied the vote and forced Jones to break it.
“He kind of got off on this one,” Greene said. “He’s not on record as having to vote for anybody, and he can always come back and say, ‘Well, I didn’t vote.’”
Jones argued he didn’t force or fineagle a vote on the issue, noting the council has tabled decisions before. As for how he would have voted to break a tie, he would not say. But he noted he supported the process.
“I don’t know. Both of them were good candidates,” Jones said. “(Greene) made the choice to leave. I didn’t leave. Have I ever had a problem breaking a tie? No. So whichever one I would have voted for, I guess we won’t know because he left.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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