Kudos & Kicks: Reviewing the good, bad and questionable
Kudos
The suggestion is obvious, so it’s a wonder it isn’t already a reality.
Collier County commissioners are looking at creating an advisory board to counsel them on issues affecting senior citizens.
“This idea seems so simple,” Commissioner Donna Fiala said at a recent meeting. “We have 33 percent of our citizens who are senior citizens.”
County government has dozens of appointed committees to provide advice on topical subjects. However, census data shows there are some 85,000 residents of the county 65 and older who this panel could represent.
That’s why Greater Naples Leadership and the Leadership Coalition on Aging jointly sent a proposal to Fiala to create the county Advisory Committee on Senior Citizen Affairs.
“We want a voice that is coordinated and broad in its base,” Lely resident Doug Hartman told commissioners on behalf of the groups.
A county staff memo suggests the committee could advise commissioners on issues such as housing, the locations of senior centers, medical services, public transportation and growth-related issues, for starters.
Commissioners have a set procedure for determining whether an advisory board is necessary, and County Manager Leo Ochs will explore during the summer whether this fits the description.
Commissioners wisely seemed ready to move forward but unanimously asked to have that report presented to them when they return in September from their summer recess.
Kick
The revolving door continues to spin thanks to a Marco Island City Council that has again botched its handling of the employment of a city manager.
What’s particularly disturbing about this failure is that we’d expected much more out of the newly elected council that seems to be searching for Harvey the Rabbit instead of the best available flesh-and-bones candidate in the nation.
The council voted 4-3 Wednesday night against offering the job to Joshua Gruber, a deputy county administrator and attorney from Beaufort, South Carolina. Two council members would have had to vote differently, as the city charter requires five of seven votes to hire a manager.
Now the council must renew its search and may have to go back to the starting line if its hired headhunting firm that did its job in delivering the best available crop of semifinalists doesn’t stay on, as was intimated late Wednesday. The council meets again Aug. 7 to consider its next steps.
The council in June had nine semifinalists to review. If it wasn’t happy with the prospects, that was the time to speak up. That wasn’t the case; all seven indicated Gruber should be a finalist. No council member articulated a well-reasoned argument Wednesday night that Gruber wasn’t the best but rather spoke often about their own process that left one candidate to interview after the other top choice withdrew in late June.
One common theme among the naysayers was that Gruber doesn't have city manager experience. If that was a criterion, the time to address that was when the job advertisement was prepared, not months later after a finalist was interviewed. Gruber’s credentials are as an assistant in a county far larger than Marco Island and as a licensed attorney.
The prior manager, Roger Hernstadt, was hired in January 2014 as the last man standing after the other then-finalist withdrew from consideration in a search that also saw its headhunting firm quit. Two council members who were staunch Hernstadt backers voted against Gruber, leaving a question whether their votes were tainted by their prior allegiance.
As the council conducts a search for its next manager to enter a door that’s revolved nonstop for nearly 10 years, it must overcome the baggage created by the Hernstadt hiring and sudden resignation this year.
Now the council’s actions create an additional challenge of the comparisons that will be made in the future to a candidate who wasn’t even hired.
Kudos
Kudos to Marco Island council members Larry Honig, Jared Grifoni and Victor Rios who followed through on the council’s agreed-upon process and were the three votes to offer the job to Gruber.