The newly seated Loxahatchee Groves Town Council approved a new contract Tuesday with Underwood Management Services Group that indicates a desire to move toward hired staff rather than contracted employees.
Mayor Dave Browning reclaimed his Seat 4, and newly elected Councilman Todd McLendon was installed in Seat 2.
After the swearing-in ceremony, Councilman Tom Goltzené nominated Browning to serve again as mayor. The council agreed on a 4-0 vote with Councilman Ryan Liang absent. McLendon nominated Goltzené to serve as vice mayor. That motion carried 3-1 with Councilman Ron Jarriel opposed.
Town Manager Bill Underwood noted that the management contract had been carried over from the February meeting, and nothing had changed in the contract since then. It extends Underwood’s contract until Sept. 30, 2018, with a retroactive start date of Oct. 1, 2015.
“We will budget appropriately annually,” Underwood said. “It includes a 2 percent raise in pay, based on other entities.”
Jarriel said he did not favor the contract.
“I disagree with doing this contract now,” he said. “April is too early. We’re at the last year of a five-year contract. It was a three-year contract, and we had the option of doing two additional one-year contracts.”
Jarriel pointed out that the town is being audited by the Palm Beach County Office of the Inspector General.
“I just do not think that this is a good time to renew this contract,” he said. “I believe that last year we decided to talk about the contract probably as early as July. We waited until too late to start talking about the contract. I can see us talking about this in June. Hopefully the audit from the OIG will be over with.”
Goltzené said they had discussed a transition to the town hiring its own employees.
“I would hope that we would take the opportunity to use the contract period that we have and the period of stability that could exist over this time to enable Bill [Underwood] to bring on perhaps a code enforcement and a building department, and bring that in-house, and then move to office staff and ultimately to the town manager and town clerk,” he said. “We might do this over a three-year period, not necessarily what I just described, but something to that effect.”
Goltzené said that would alleviate whatever concerns might be about changing management companies and losing institutional knowledge of the town.
“I think that if we could get to where we have our own staff, we won’t have that massive turnover,” he said. “I trust that Bill is capable of bringing us to that point, and if we all go into this with that in mind, then there is nobody thinking that Bill’s trying to find himself a lifetime job or a place to retire to. Rather, he’s going to transition himself right out of a job.”
McLendon agreed with Goltzené. “The fact that the inspector general is going through this right now, maybe this is a good time to do a new contract,” McClendon said. “That way they can go through the new contract and make sure that everything’s all right, rather than the process of going through the old contract and determining what’s right and wrong, then we have to create a new contract.”
Browning also agreed with renewing the contract.
“I think it’s important for the employees of Bill Underwood to know that there is some continuity and they’ve got a job to come to, and they do not have to worry about having a job four months from now,” he said.
McLendon made a motion to approve the contract, which carried 3-1 with Jarriel opposed.
ABOVE: Newly elected Councilman Todd McLendon takes the oath of office.
