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In Depth: New Century City Manager Job Description Has Conflicts With Town Charter
September 22, 2019
The Town of Century is now advertising to find a city manager. But an in-depth comparison by NorthEscambia.com between the duties of the Century mayor and the advertised duties of the new city manager revealed several potential conflicts, and perhaps even the wrongful removal of power from the mayor.
The job ad.
The town describes the ideal candidate as “qualified and highly motivated”, and requires a bachelor’s degree in public administration or a related field, plus five years of experience in local government administration of a senior management position. The salary is listed as negotiable based upon experience.
The city manager will serve as the chief executive officer of the town, be responsible for the management of day-to-day operations, attend all town council meetings and supervise all departments, according to the job description.
Earlier this month, the town council approved the creation of the ad by town staff, but did not require their approval before the ad disseminated for publication. The town council never approved the wording of the city manager’s job duties.
Psst. It’s a town. Not a city.
Before diving into the conflicts, it’s worth noting semantics on city manager versus town manager. There is no legal distinction between the terms city, town or village under Florida law. The job description refers only to a city manager. Century is a town, according to its charter, and the word “city” does not appear in the charter while the word town appears some 75 times. “The Town of Century, Florida, is hereby created…” is the first line of the charter.
Job may conflict with town charter.
Some of the duties of the city manager, according to the job descriptions, seem to directly conflict with the duties of the mayor as specified by the town charter. The town charter is the legal document that established the town.
For instance, both the mayor and city manager are set to be the chief executive officer of the town. Arguably, there can only be one chief executive officer. Webster’s defines a chief executive officer as “the person has the most authority in an organization or business”.
The charter directs the mayor to submit the annual budget to the town council, while the job description gives that duty to the city manager. There is only one annual budget.
There are other potential conflicts between the charter and city manager’s job, but presumably the city manager would perform those duties as directed by the mayor.
Comparisons are below between the mayor’s job per the charter and the city manager job per the job description.
The application period for the city manager job ends November 1.
Comments
20 Responses to “In Depth: New Century City Manager Job Description Has Conflicts With Town Charter”
Thinking—-let the good times roll and CONFUSION reign!
Help support me I’ve interested in the city manager I have town and county job for years in new york have the experience to shake things up I don’t have a bachelor degree but have been to the school of hard knocks support me promise to not let you down do everything in my power to get it right I love century let’s get to work
Doesn’t this remind you of that movie titled “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”
WELL HERE WE GO AGAIN, THE SAME OLD GAMES . WHEN WILL SOMEONE GO TO JAIL. SO NOW WE SEE A NEW STORY COMING UP. HA HA HA
William, I would like to thank you for writing this article. While I am not happy with the things going on in the Town of Century we still cannot change the charter without a vote of the people, not one single line. In your article about the job being posted along with the job description, a comment was posted by Original Citizen “handle’ that read as follows “This is a work around, sometimes ya gotta do what you gotta do. Sorry cant close us down that easy. This suggest to me that someone or maybe more are trying to work around going through proper channels and getting things done the correct way. There will be an election in 2020 and that is when we all need to come together quit fussing among ourselves and vote some or all of these people that were elected to do a job for the citizens of this town and have really let us down out of office.
If it’s possible, this fiasco will lead to much more confusion. The way it works out is; when everybody is in charge, nobody is in charge. The mayor can say he done it, and the manager can say the mayor done it. The charter (state law) says the Mayor is in charge, The Mayor could refuse to even give the keys to city hall to a council appointed manager. Meanwhile,,,,,,everybody lounges around the dining table at the new B & B.
I thought the mayor was the town manager. just get a new one of those. Why pay Two people to do basically the same job
It seems the nature of small town city management that communities seldom trust a city manager when the person is trustworthy but often trust a city manager who is not trustworthy. I have been a finalist several times, a city manager once and the local banker was not happy with funds (10k+) moved from checking to longer term investments.
They could fix all that just by changing the wording and having the manager report/submit to the Mayor for his approval and appropriate dissemination. Easy fix, eh?
In their attempt to work around the mayor seems like the council jump the gun and was not subtle enough in the job description.
Century does need a town manager. They needef one decaded ago. The new charter committee have their work cutout for them.
If the mayor could do the job he ran for and was elected to, this wouldn’t come up.
It seems he can’t.
It has.
But, yes. They are illegally advertising an illegal job for a non-existent city.
David for better people
They probably just copied and pasted the city manager job duties from a nearby city rather than taking the time to come up with a new one.
Looks like the mayor has fallen short of his duties!!!!!
trying to hire a scapegoat.
DOES THE MAYOR EVEN QUALIFY FOR THE JOB????????????????
Perhaps they are gonna fire Henry?
Leave it to Century to mess up even a help wanted ad.
Imagine that. The town is trying to hire out those responsibilities assigned to the inept, inexperienced, and loathsome current mayor. I’m sure the mayor knows the exact language that he and Buz Eddie came up with that would absolve the mayor of all work. How convenient, since he can’t or won’t do it anyway. The town needs to elect a mayor with experience and is willing to do the job, and get away from its good old boy system. You vote for people who will work and not just because of the way they look.
All of this is a waste of time until we get rid of the current administration. Just look at all of the wrong doing we have from N,E. articles alone. This alone is more than enough reason to remove them from office. If we have this much public evidence you can be sure what we do not know about is ten fold.
The committee better get that charter done ASAP.
Hopefully the Mayor will be satisfied with the title and stay out of the way.
This is funny…well, not really.
This bunch can’t do anything right.