Burton defends hiring at Palmetto CRA

PALMETTO – Jeff Burton said he isn't trying to create some sort of jobs program at the Palmetto Community Redevelopment Agency, he's just trying to get the work done.

Burton, the CRA's interim executive director, clashed mostly with City Commissioner Mary Lancaster Monday night as he tried to explain why he has hired a Geographical Information Systems staffer, promoted an office staffer to a higher-paying position, and is seeking to hire a part-time office assistant.

During the City Commission part of the combined meeting, Burton said he had offered the GIS position to a laid-off city worker who turned it down because he wanted full-time work with benefits.

In fact, the city is saving quite a bit of money by hiring part-timers with no benefits, Burton said, and noted that one City Hall staffer to whom he offered the office assistant position turned it down because she wanted to stay at City Hall.

The first motion, in the City Commission section of the meeting, was to approve moving money to pay two people who have already been hired and started working, and to approve the spending for Burton, who has a six-month extension on his contract.

Lancaster said her concern was that they laid off someone from GIS and no one got pay raises but this one person in the CRA. Did he offer them to laid-off city staff? she asked.

”These positions were offered to anyone who had applied for them,“ Burton said. ”And in both cases nobody applied.“

Commissioner Tamara Cornwell asked if there was a time-certain end for the jobs in the CRA, and Burton said that the strategic planning specialist position has an end date, but not the GIS person because they're at the beginning of the process. That position may go full-time with the city at some point when they see the power of the software.

Right now, the part-timers are working around 30 hours a week with no benefits, and that's saving the city about 40 percent, Burton said.

The GIS staffer is making $11 an hour, and he is working through the issues discovered by attorney Susan Churuti, who is conducting the audit of the CRA, Burton said. The staffer is on item six of 30 and going through them thoroughly.

Commissioner Alan Zirkelbach advised Burton to make sure that he was creating positions based on the need for the work, and not just to give a job to someone, and Burton assured him that that was the case.

The motion to approve the budget changes to pay for the positions and Burton's extension carried 3-2.

CRA portion

In the CRA portion of the meeting, Burton said he needed a part-time office assistant for 31 hours a week to handle office responsibilities because the executive assistant is very busy with other responsibilities, and it's affecting the quality of some of the work coming out of the CRA.

”The executive assistant is the only one who has any type of institutional knowledge of the organization is currently being stretched around by just about everybody,“ he said.

She's pulling a lot of records and helped in the work to determine the actual boundaries of the CRA.

”Right off the bat, we determined a number of things about the CRA boundary that were assumptions that were not true or true,“ Burton said. One discovery was that an area that got $50,000 from the CRA was actually not in the CRA at that time.

Like the jobs discussed in the City Commission meeting, it's a no-benefits job, and it pays $11.9304 an hour, Burton said.

The executive assistant's work is taking her away from the phones and other office responsibilities, including agendas for meetings. That employee is handling a lot of other functions, and that's why she was promoted and given more money.

But the more menial tasks need to go to someone else, Burton said, because of difficulties due to the executive assistant's workload.

Commissioner Tambra Varnadore said her concern was that with him as the acting director, a permanent director might come in and want to change things.

”Do you have a recommendation yet?“ she asked.

”The beautiful thing about part-time positions is that if you deem that that position is no longer necessary, you unbudget the position and the position disappears,“ Burton said.

No dirt in motion

Lancaster said her big issue is that Burton's doing all this hiring, but ”I haven't seen any dirt move.“

”You're doing GIS and you tell me all these plans, a year has gone by, and no projects are getting done,“ she said.

Burton noted that there are $3.6 million in projects in the pipeline, and it hasn't been a year since he took on the CRA job.

”The engineering has to be done before the earth moves,“ said Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant.

Commissioner Brian Williams said that the CRA area has to be properly identified, and they can't expect that work to be completed in three and a half months.

”What we're trying to do here is trying to make sure that when you do spend money, you spend it according to the plan,“ Burton said.

With the warning by Cornwell that the job be posted correctly, the commissioners voted 5-0 to approve the position. In the City Commission portion of the meeting, the item was again approved 5-0.