By Chip Ross
Fernandina Beach
City Commissioner
December 29, 2020
Four days before Christmas I received an e-mail from an unhappy City resident. Instead of extending wishes of Christmas good will and cheer he wanted me to fire the City Manager. He identified “numerous actions and inactions” by the Manager who he deems “ineffective in his role” and actually put “the City in a worse position then (than) when he got here.” There was no mention of the twelve days of Christmas, instead he listed the twelve “issues” that caused him to recommend hiring a new City Manager. Most of the accusations were either inaccurate or misdirected. The resident offered no solutions to the City’s problems other than to fire the City Manager.
If anyone believes the City is in a worse position than it was 5 years ago – then it needs to be blamed on me and the City Commission. A City Manager, under our system of city government, only implements what the City Commission instructs him to do. During the last three years, those instructions were usually passed by a unanimous vote on all the issues that came before the Commission.
The litany of “issues” enumerated included the mismanagement of the Marina, Golf Course, capital projects, City finances, trash pickup, and beach cleaning. The City does face significant challenges to remain financially viable and still maintain its current levels of services. However, multiple City Commissions, extending back many years, failed to adequately fund the maintenance of the marina, golf course, recreational equipment, beach walkovers, and the renovation and the replacement of City infrastructure. Multiple Commissions failed to deliver on 20 years of promises to provide a viable downtown waterfront and act upon preventing the flooding of the historic downtown.
If you need to blame someone for the current “distressed position” of the Marina, blame me and the previous Commissioners. When I first came into office 3 years ago the Marina had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Matthew and unusable. It had a poorly designed layout and was full of mud. It had a non-responsive Marina management company and was approximately six million dollars in debt. With the full support of the community, three years later, the storm-ravaged Marina has been replaced with a new dock layout and the mud removed. The Marina operator has been replaced and a plan has been crafted to pay off the old and new debt. All the steps to accomplish these improvements and the marina’s funding were approved by a 5-0 City Commission vote with two exceptions that were 4-1. The Manager did what he was instructed to do. In addition, every Commissioner either met or had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Martin on a weekly basis to have any question or concern addressed.
There was one “spot-on” accusation in the citizen’s 12 issues for Christmas. The beach “walkovers have never had a renovation/replacement plan” and “the City shut 14 [the real number was 12] walkovers at spring break [March 2019]”. It is true that for decades the City Commission has failed to adequately fund beach walkover repairs. Rather than fund walkover repairs from the General Fund, over the years they consistently voted to build new walkovers with Impact Fee Funds (Impact Fees can only be used for “new” capital improvements, not for maintenance.) To put together a maintenance plan, and to put to rest the number of walkovers in actual need of repair, the City Manager (with Commission approval) had the good sense to order an independent engineer to evaluate the structures and their safety. The engineer recommended twelve (12) beach access boardwalks be closed based on structural deficiencies. Once a report of dangerous and unsafe beach walkers was received, it was imperative to remove them because of their poor condition. The City does not need another law suit, nor does anyone want to see someone injured falling through an unsafe beach walk over. Since the previous Commission could not agree on a plan for funding for their repair or replacement, the City Manager tasked a citizen committee to develop a plan for accessing all 50 beach accesses. Accepting the recommended plan and agreeing to its funding will be up to the new City Commission.
Three years ago, the five previous City Commissioners directed the City Manager to go out for bids on the City trash service. Four Commissioners chose Advanced Disposal. Advanced Disposal and the City agreed to a contract that specifically stated yard waste was to be collected by “bagging and bundling”. All five City Commissioners agreed to the contract. None of the City Commissioners objected to the “bag and bundle” provision. For a period of time, Advanced Disposal kept picking up the yard waste “as was done in the past” with a grapple truck (which costs more). However, recently, Advanced Disposal was bought out by another company, Waste Management. Waste Management is demanding the City pay for the more expensive grapple truck yard waste removal service, or they will discontinue picking up the piles of yard waste that are not “bagged and bundled” as stated in the contract. It is disingenuous to blame the City Manager when all five previous Commissioners [myself included] agreed to the current contract that required yard waste to be “bagged and bundled”.
In the past three years, the City Manager, at the direction of the City Commissioners, implemented a consensus plan for on-beach parking, added new beach trash receptacles that now allow reliable (no overflowing trash cans) and cost-efficient trash pickup, and a beach cleaning service to assist the volunteer beach cleanup personnel in keeping the beaches clean. (The volunteers can’t do it all.) The Tourist Development Council (TDC) now funds the daily, paid beach clean-up service. At the direction of the Commission’s votes, a 35-foot building height limit was placed on properties at the beach, the rental of accessory dwelling units was permitted to assist with affordable housing, multiple parcels for permanent preservation of environmentally sensitive land were added to the Future Land Use Map, the City Charter was changed to preserve conservation lands in perpetuity, a Human Relations Ordinance was passed, many flood ordinances were added to protect City residents and businesses from flood damage. These ordinances also had the added benefit of significantly lowering residents’ flood insurance premiums. Multiple other actions were taken to preserve and improve the quality of life in Fernandina beach. These actions were taken by the City Manager at the direction of the Commission.
It’s easy to blame a City Manager for any of the City’s perceived failings. Perhaps that is why the City has historically had so many City Managers in the past. The blame for unpopular decisions or actions or inaction taken by Commissioners can be easily shifted to the City Manager.
Instead of firing Mr. Martin as the unhappy resident requests and spending the next 6-12 months searching for a new City Manager, I believe the current Commission should give Mr. Martin the support, direction, funding to implement the City Commission goals. My job as a City Commisioner is to set, in conjunction with the other Commissioners, the goals and policy and then give the City Manager and staff the support and funding to accomplish those goals. I am confident in Mr. Martins’s ability to accomplish the will of the City Commission.
Happy Holidays to all, and may I express my great hope that a New Year brings unity to our City Commission to resolve our City’s critical issues.
After retiring 8 years age to Amelia, we decided to move away due in part to the lotal mis-management of city funds, the “good o’ boy ” network and the high taxes.
Wow. Thank you Chip, for commending the tireless efforts of our City Manager to do as directed. And I don’t blame you and the other commissioners; I thank you.
Well said. Thank you for a positive approach. Take two aspirin and get a good nights sleep.
” or they will discontinue picking up the piles of yard waste that are not “bagged and bundled”
When was this mandated? As a city resident I was NEVER told this….and neither were the occupants of the other 21 residences in my development. You can’t expect citizens to change how they have done things for YEARS without 1) being told of the change and 2) being given a reasonable amount of time to adjust to the change AFTER they are notified.
So, who was responsible for notifying the citizens??
Oh, Merry Christmas, such as it was.
Excellent piece and thank you. This is a great way to begin to understand some of the ‘process’ and history of how things work on the island. My wife and I are excited to have purchased a piece of property, building our home on Amelia Island, and are looking forward to becoming involved in any way we can. Cheers.
Thank you Dr. Ross for laying all these matters out in very clear and unambiguous manner. There can be no doubt that while there has been great progress there is still much work to be done in 2021. We should all have great confidence that with this detailed summary of our needs in hand, priorities and timetables for achieving goals can be set at the upcoming visioning session in January. Best wishes to you and Mrs. Ross for a very Happy, healthy New Year.
Thank you Chip. Once again, you have provided an explanation – supported by chronology – behind the current status of issues facing the city. I appreciate the time and effort it took to compose this editorial.
It would be enlightening to read exactly what Chip Ross is responding to. Who wrote it? What exactly did it say? Since Commissioner Ross responded to it publicly it should be made available to the public. Otherwise Ross’s piece is merely a prejudiced summary of his opinion of the job he thinks City Manager Martin is doing — another Observer puff piece.
The email sent to all City Commissioners is public record, here it it:
Fernandina Beach City Commissioners,
Based on the NUMEROUS actions and inactions by the City Manager, Mr. Martin, I believe it is time to do a comprehensive evaluation of his performance and determine whether he should continue in the position of City Manager. While he may work hard, Mr. Martin has been ineffective in his role and actually the city is in a worse position than when he got here.
Below, I have outlined many issues that should be considered in your evaluation.
FEMA/Marina reimbursement – His late application to FEMA, misrepresentations to the city commission, inability to effectively manage Westrec and other contractors, leaving fuel sales as a last priority, and a $15 million in debt all leave the city in a very distressed position regarding the Marina.
Golf Course contract. Why was this contract left to virtually expire causing an emergency 60 day renewal when it should have been an issue 6 months ago to schedule an orderly renewal or replacement? Why was the Golf Course Advisory Committee not involved in the decision earlier? Addressing contract issues at the last minute results in poor decisions and costs the city money.
Beach cleanup mismanagement with the TDC. This cost the city an additional $180,000 dollars that could have been avoided.
Walkover shutdown. Walkovers have never had a renovation/replacement plan. When the city shut 14 walkovers at spring break this became an emergency and disruptive to many who just wanted to walk to the beach. Clearly this important city asset has been mismanaged over time. They did not all fall into disrepair overnight. Even now, we still do not have a good go-forward plan.
PTO on resignation inconsistent application of policy. Favoritism in the application of human resource policies has exposed the city to litigation once again based on recent correspondence to the city commissioners. The years of inconsistent policy application all fall under his watch. Why wasn’t a policy put in place sooner?
Calling out speakers at a city commission meeting. Last year when city residents spoke out at a city commission meeting regarding taxes, several of us were called out specifically by Mr. Martin AT THE MEETING with our tax records called up questioning why we would have an objection because of the amount of our taxes or the amount of the increase impacting us personally. This was completely inappropriate and upset several of the speakers. Speakers are intimidated enough to stand up to the City Commission, they do not need to be challenged by the City Manager on their personal situations. Many of us speak for the community and not just for ourselves! All of this and he has the nerve to advocate the “public participation process” in his weekly article this week – This is hypocritical and arrogant.
Mismanagement of city finances. Mr. Martin has repeatedly sought to increase taxes, increase payroll, increase staffing levels, hire expensive consultants, and spend money irresponsibly. Robbing the city reserves to pay for FY 2020/2021 spending is not the answer!
Capital projects. The city currently has $70 million dollars of capital projects in the pipeline. Some have been added late to the capital budget as an emergency when they were not even on the prior years five year capital improvement plan. Others like vehicles have been expanded out of control with little oversight. The budgeting process needs more transparency, it is a mess and NOT managed well.
Decision making. The railroading of the Oasis contract without adhering to established processes and policies, dropping issues on the meeting agendas without a thought out process, and hiring consultants to make decisions that he as City Manager along with his staff should be driving are all examples of his decision making skills you should be examining.
Waste management. With the change in ownership, the city manager is floating a 33% increase in rates. While this has been a well known issue for some time, there has been no effort to represent the interests of the residents by maintaining current rates and services or exploring competitive bids to establish alternatives to put the city in a better negotiating position.
Municipal relationships. Our relationship with Nassau County is strained. It is no wonder when the City Manager presents and asks for $500k at a county meeting with no real plan, justification or reasoning. Our relationship with the county and other local entities should be much stronger. That relationship starts with a professional, empathetic and engaging City Manager.
I respectfully request that the commissioners address the issues above as well as issues that they have personally observed and experienced and put an item on the city commission meeting agenda to discuss next steps in hiring a City Manager who could better serve our community.
Jack
Jack Knocke
Common Sense Fernandina Beach
470-295-4365
Thank you for your service and also for providing clarity on the issues referenced.
Thank you for the update…. there is still alot to be done in 2021. Happy New Year!!
It is clear to me that Dale Martin has done an excellent job as our City Manager.
I certainly appreciate Chip Ross’ positive comments about Mr. Martin’s services to our community.
I believe that Mr. Knocke has valid points. If Mr. Ross wants to take the blame for the city’s failings along with the other commissioners then perhaps he should resign his position. The City Manager is paid a nice salary to deal with these issues.
My take is, he is reactive vs proactive in most cases. You commissioners hired him and instead of trying to protect him, hold him accountable to doing his job.