Updated: Commission's City Manager Selection Expected Today

Update: City manager candidate Rick Chaffin has pulled out of the application process, according to interim City Manager Terry Lewis.

"After due consideration and significant discussion with my family, I do not believe it would be the right move, professionally or personally at this time," Chaffin wrote in an email to Colin Baenziger, who is performing the candidate search. "I thoroughly enjoyed the interview process and the opportunity to meet some of the great citizens who are strong believers in Sarasota and its bright future."

Earlier: Sarasota's City Commission is expected to take the next step moving away from the by making its selection for the city's new city manager. 

The commission is expected to vote to offer a contract to one of four finalists who made the cut for the position:

• Thomas Barwin - Village Manager, Village of Oak Park, Illinois  -  2006 to 2012
• Rick Chaffin - Deputy City Manager, McKinney, Texas  -  2006 to 2012
• James Chisholm - City Manager, Daytona Beach, Florida  -  2004 to present
• Edward Mitchell - City Administrator, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1999 to present 

Contract negotiations would then proceed and a contract would have to be signed before the manager could take office. The selection is slated during unfinished business in the afternoon portion of the agenda. That starts at 2:30 p.m. in the Commission Chambers at .

The , a citizens' panel and department heads Saturday during a workshop where all were asked similar questions, including some tough ones about questions with their work history.

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The commission also emphasized in their questioning several major themes: 

• Collaboration with staff, city businesses and organizations as well as with the county and region,

• Selection of a new police chief that the manager would hire to replace retiring Chief Mikel Hollaway

• Focusing on a community-policing model instituted in High Point, North Carolina

• Growing Sarasota's population

• Pension strategy (which is also being )

All candidates said they would embrace the community policing model and hire a chief to reflect that, and changing the pension program for officers — which is expected to be decided Monday as well — won't damage the city's chances to recruit quality officers.

Thomas Barwin

Barwin emphasized an open door approach as city manager, getting out around the city to see how projects are going and how the neighborhoods are holding up.

"Like Mayor Atwell, I like to walk and get out to walk around, look around," Barwin said. "I'm an avid bicyclist, and I'm an active jogger, so I make it a practice to jog around town. Officially, some of these informal, but I make it a practice to get in a vehicle once a week with our city engineers and look around construction projects underway or we're anticipating to be on our radar screen in the months or years ahead, making sure we're making the proper priorities."

Barwin said he would embrace the community policing model, having started his career in law enforcement, training at the University of London's Sir Robert Peel Center. 

"I think the police chief is a critical, critical position," he said. "I think it sets the tone, sets the environment, it sets the discipline and follow-up and programs and priorities."

Barwin added that Florida's accessible open records laws might deter some quality chief candidates from applying. 

"I don't know if there's a workaround for that," he said. 

Commissioner Terry Turner noted that none of the Oak Park Village Board of Trustees would furnish a reference for his application.

, Oak Park-River Forest Patch reports, and without reason. Barwin told the commission the village's Board of Trustees had a heavy turnover during six years — 18 new members — and that the only two members to survive those elections had told him the trustees were not happy with his performance.

"My relationship with the board in terms of how we organized and required to do an annual performance appraisal, and each and every year we went through that process, I attempted to tell all of my trustees and communicate with them that anytime they were not happy with me, all they had to do was say so, and I was prepared to move along because life is too short to live in constant turmoil," Barwin said. 

However, Barwin maintained he did not know what specific reasons why he was pressured to leave.

"No reasons were really given, and I was so shocked at that point, I didn't even ask for reasons at that point," he said.

During Barwin's departure, when his $125,000 severance, the village board's counsel instructed the trustees to not speak to anyone because of the contractual obligations being handled, according to Barwin.

Barwin had also became a , but told Patch he pulled out of that application process because "it wasn't a good fit."

For collaboration, Barwin said he trains his staff's interaction with the public "not meaning to telling folks no, but explaining to them how to get something done in terms of a partnership."

Rick Chaffin 

Chaffin described his approach to managing to be "a generalist" where a deputy city manager would do more of the day-to-day operations because he has a breadth of experience, but not depth in a particular area.

"My role as a city manager as I see it, in this new environment of public engagement, is engaging the public, engaging the employees, facilitating, conducting and leading our staff — setting the tone, setting the environment for staff to be successful," Chaffin said.

"If my role were to be that person, then I would rely very heavily on the deputy or assistant and the departments to implement the day-to-day operations."

Chaffin adds that the "responsibility rests with me." 

For police recruitment with a defined contribution plan, Chaffin said finding good officers won't be an issue.

"I don't think that's a valid argument that you're not going to be able to recruit high quality officers from around the country and this state if you change," Chaffin said. "You can't change it significantly. You still have to be in the ballpark, but I don't think that's going to hurt you."

Turner noted that most of Chaffin's references say that the former McKinney, Texas, city manager can "talk to much and you have trouble making hard decisions."

Chaffin said those criticisms arose in how McKinney was going through growing pains, booming with building 1,000 homes a year, having also turned over three deputy city managers and three city managers. 

"There was an environment of instability, an environment of uncertainty, and in terms of making decisions because I was the interim — I wasn't going to be the city manager, I didn't want to be the city manager — I was careful," Chaffin. "Being interim city manager is a tough job because you're in limbo and what you're trying to do is you know things need to be changed, but you can't because you don't know how the next person" will operate.

Commissioner Shannon Snyder asked Chaffin about privatizing government operations, as Snyder had floated the idea of

Chaffin also had to deal with privatization of government in Roswell, Georgia, where water, sewage and landfill operations were outsourced to businesses and in hindsight, believes there are limits to privatization.

"I think it's important that we don't exchange a public monopoly for a private monopoly," Chaffin said. "The competition, I think, is what's important, and you can get competition from a number of different ways."

Chaffin advised the commissioners that day-to-day operations are good to outsource and to not "monetize your decision-making authority."

James Chisholm

Chisholm also believes that a defined contribution plan wouldn't harm the city's police department.

"If the current plan is not sustainable and you have to make it sustainable, it's [the police union's] obligation to work with you to find that common ground where it is sustainable," Chisholm said.

As for a police chief hire, Chisholm points toward the drug, prostitution and other crime issues in Daytona Beach that was problematic when he arrived in the city and chalked that up to the police not working within the community. The police department would have to move forward first to make that change, he said.

In Daytona Beach, the city and police department worked to develop a plan, similar to the , to cut down on crime.

"It's not about arresting everybody," Chisholm said. "It's about being engaged in the community and being a part of it."

Turner keyed in on Chisholm as why he would leave Daytona Beach where he makes $170,693.

Chisholm said both cities are successful on different levels — Daytona with racing and Sarasota with "sophistication and the arts."

"As a manager, you always want to end up in a city that's a little more cosmopolitan," Chisholm said. "You manage to build that, and I'm at a point in my career where Sarasota offers that opportunity for me."

Chisholm also served as city manager in St. Cloud from 1982-1989 — his first city manager job — and was dismissed because the mayor ran on a ticket on firing the city managers, he said. What did Chisholm do to get fired?

"He was from Ohio, and I was from Florida," he said, getting a chuckle out of the commission. "They do things different in Ohio, and I wasn't willing to do what he wanted."

Edward Mitchell

Mitchell's approach to being city manager is "boots-on-the-ground."

"I go out on a monthly basis and do work side-by-side with the city employees," Mitchell said, rattling off the various jobs he helped staff with — cleaning canals, streetlight work, resetting sidewalks and more. 

"I think in building trust in staff, it takes leadership, and that leadership is getting out and participating with the staff, and that hopefully will give the staff more confidence and exhibit itself in the work that they produce with the citizens," Mitchell said. 

For policing, Mitchell said the "residents have to embrace the police, and the police have to embrace your residents." 

He said that a community-oriented policing model is a tough sell for some officers, but those officers who are successful at it are well connected with neighborhood associations as well as offenders. 

"Hopefully he says things like, 'Johnny got out of jail the other day. He was in jail for 10 car break-ins, let's keep an eye on him,'" he said. 

West Palm Beach police have a program where officers do just that and talk to a juvenile offender's parents and tell them that police will monitor their child in the community to make sure they're not getting into trouble. 

West Palm Beach's history of corruption — in the city and county — is troubling for Turner, and he questioned where Mitchell was in all of this when two commissioners went to jail in a pay-for-play scheme.

"That was one of the darkest days in West Palm Beach's history," Mitchell said. 

Mitchell explained that the scenario where a commissioner would request Mitchell to have a building inspection and zoning, and police officers cite violations for properties unknowing there was a scheme to lower the value of a property for a cheaper sale.

"Everyday I would get emails from commissioners to look at code enforcement issues or a building problem," Mitchell said. "It was nothing out of the ordinary. I was never implicated; no other city employees were implicated. The employees were doing their job as directed." 

Mitchell said the only irregularity was the requests were made on properties outside of the commissioner's district, but commissioners do receive contact for assistance for issues outside of their district.

Turner also was troubled that Mitchell would leave a job that pays him $210,000 for one that paid Bartolotta $177,000 when he left, in a smaller city.

"I think to take 19 years of experience in West Palm Beach and transfer it here would be an asset to the community," Mitchell said. "To take a cut in pay or to take a smaller organization of to be the leader or manager of is fine with me.

"I'm not hung up on an ego where I have to manage a city of 100,000 residents and 1,800 employees. I think you make a difference of quality of life standpoint." 

Beyond the issues that Turner asked, the Palm Beach Post said Mitchell and his deputy city administrator were criticized for not monitoring money spent by a nonprofit housing program ran by a church where the federal government demanded the grant money to be returned because of shoddy accounting.

Sarasota is also in the midst of a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development investigation concerning grant money.

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