by Summer Hampton, [email protected]
During a Brooksville City Council meeting on October 4th, a decision was made on the proposed City Manager contract between the City of Brooksville and Ron Snowberger, Acting City Manager. The contract was drafted by Mayor Pat Brayton and John Cary, partner with the Vose Law Firm, City Attorney, as directed at the September 20th meeting.
During the last discussion on the City Manager contract, some concerns were raised. Mayor Pat Brayton took those concerns into consideration when drafting the contract with the City Attorney. Pat expressed he feels comfortable with the contract.
Brayton stated that the two main differences between this contract and the previous city manager contract are: The vehicle payment is gone and Snowberger will be under the Florida Retirement System Investment Plan as a regular employee, not a senior employee, which will save the city a good amount of money.
Brayton then turned it over to John Cary who said, “This is basically based off of the contract that we had with the prior city manager, so most of the provisions are the same. Including the termination provisions and the step for the severance, depending on how long he is here. The other change that I wanted to mention, that you all approved a few weeks ago, is the residency requirement. Which has been removed. With that, this is the contract that the Mayor and I negotiated with Ron. It has been approved by Pat and the acting city manager, and if the council accepts it today then he will be the regular city manager going forward.”
Brayton added, “To clarify the agreement will be active today, but his services will officially begin Wednesday morning (Oct. 6) at 8 am. I brought that up to the council before, because of the payroll date and the council was okay with that.
Council Member Bell made a motion to approve the contract, with a second from Council Member Erhard, but with discussion required.
Erhard stated, “Nothing against you Ron. I personally think that the City Manager should be a resident and that should be a requirement. All the board members are required to be a resident, the city council is required to be a resident, so I think the city manager should be. I’m glad to see the stipend for the vehicle has been removed. However, one other thing that I would like to address is, I don’t see an annual review of the contract as opposed to an open-ended contract.”
Mayor Pat Brayton clarified that the contract is an open-ended one, but with an annual evaluation, so the council would have the opportunity to terminate the city manager then at these evaluations.
The motion was approved 5-0.
Mayor Pat Brayton extended congratulations to Ron Snowberger, new Brooksville City Manager. Snowberger will receive an annual base salary of $106,030.
