City Health Insurance special meeting expands . . .

Submitted by Susan Hardee Steger

September 10, 2015

September 10, 2015 5:30 p.m.

What was noticed as a special meeting of the Fernandina Beach City Commission on September 9, to vote on a motion to approve new medical and dental  insurance providers, took an unexpected turn and became a discussion of a previous night’s special meeting to select city manager candidates for interviews.

Health Insurance

After a motion and no discussion or public input, the commission quickly approved United Health Care and Met Life Dental as the City’s new medical insurance providers. As reported by Suanne Z. Thamm, a previous attempt during an September 3 meeting, resulted in Greg Fohan, an attorney representing the police union appearing before the commission to remind them “that the city has a duty to bargain such a change and asked that they take no action until that obligation could be fulfilled.” No vote was taken at that time.

City Manager Joe Gerrity

At Wednesday’s meeting City Manager Joe Gerrity recognized the process used to switch providers could “handled better,” but a plan is in place to have employee and union representatives involved the next time changes are made to medical plans. (See previous meeting) “When you do something different, the first time you obviously learn, I suggested to Ashley [ Metz - Human Resource Director] that next year when we look at health insurance changes or renewals that she include a member from each of the unions to sit in on the meetings. It is not really a negotiation, but it gives them an opportunity to see exactly what we are looking at and provide them with an opportunity for input.”

City Manager Candidate Search

Vice Mayor Johnny Miller

Although not an agenda item, the subject of the city manager search was raised by Vice Mayor Miller who voiced his concern on a vote taken at the Tuesday night special meeting, attended by Colin Baenziger of search firm Colin Baenziger & Associates, that a candidate with support of one commissioner was selected to be interviewed, but two candidates (Matthew Delk and Jim Pascale) with support from two commissioners were not selected. The commission voted 3 -2 to bring 5 candidates for interviews (Michael Bonfield (3 votes); Debra Figueroa (3 votes); Dale Martin (5 votes); Calvin Peck (4 votes); and Mark Kutney (1 vote). Although Miller and Gass voted against Tuesday night's motion, neither spoke to the motion prior to the vote.

At Wednesday's meeting, Miller asked commissioners to add the two additional candidates to the interview list to bring a total of  seven candidates for interviews.  Gass responded it is “fine with me.”

City Attorney Tammi Bach informed Miller that since this was a reconsideration to undo a passed motion, someone from the prevailing side (Poynter, Lentz, Boner) must bring the motion back. Baenziger recommended at Tuesday's meeting that 4 - 5 candidates be selected for interviews.

Mayor Boner asked if all commissioners top choice candidate made the list, and all responded they did with Miller saying “close” adding his second choice did not make the list. Boner said one of the candidates Miller was interested in adding to the list was on his lower tier.  In the candidate selection, Miller selected three candidates while other commissioners selected 4 – 5.

Since there was no motion from the prevailing side, Mayor Boner adjourned the meeting.