Board members have stressed transparency in new process
At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 26, the Sarasota city commissioners will conduct a special meeting during which they will discuss the proposals city staff has received from the three firms chosen as finalists to handle the search for a new city manager.
The session will be held in the Commission Chambers of City Hall, which stands at 1565 First St. in downtown Sarasota.
During the board members’ regular meeting on Aug. 18, City Auditor and Clerk Shayla Griggs announced that she had some “happy news” for them.
“As of Friday afternoon,” Griggs said, “we received proposals from all three firms that you all selected.”
She and City Attorney Joe Polzak would get the materials to the commissioners “as soon as possible,” Griggs added. First, though, she continued, she and Polzak needed “to go through them and make sure we have everything we need before we get them out.”
In early May, the city commissioners tasked Griggs and Polzak with handling a new search for a city manager to replace Marlon Brown, whose resignation was effective on Oct. 15, 2024. Initially, city Human Resources Director Stacie Mason and her staff were in charge of the process, as the Human Resources Department has done in the past. However, during a workshop and subsequent special meeting in early April, the commissioners bemoaned the lack of public transparency in the efforts to find a successor for Brown.
Then the firm that Mason and her staff had hired for the search — Colin Baenzinger & Associates — informed city staff on April 21 that it was withdrawing from the process.
During the Aug. 18 discussion, Griggs proposed a special meeting for the commissioners to discuss the materials that she and Polzak had received from the three finalists for the search.
Vice Mayor Debbie Trice asked for clarification that Griggs was suggesting that she would “get the proposals to us and one week from [Aug. 19] potentially we will — what — vote [on them]?”
“I’m saying I want to make it a special meeting so you can take action,” Griggs responded.
If a workshop were conducted, Griggs added, and the commissioners wanted to direct her and Polzak to undertake more research, for example, they would be unable to do so.
“Theoretically, the action could be to invite each of them to —” Trice began.
“Whatever you all decide,” Griggs responded.
“I want you all to be able to vote,” she reiterated her earlier point.
“We anticipate that you’re going to do interviews,” Polzak said.
When Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch asked how soon the board members would get the proposals, Griggs told her that she hoped that would happen the next day.
The three firms the commissioners selected as finalists on July 7 were Slavin Management Consultants of Norcross, Ga.; Sumter Local Government Consulting of Atlanta; and MGT Impact Solutions of Tampa.
The proposals comprise 165 pages of the backup agenda document for the Aug. 26 special meeting.
A Sarasota News Leader scan of the documents found the fee submitted by each firm:
- MGT — $45,000.
- Sumter — $18,000, “plus expenses restricted to pre-approved advertising costs (authorized by the City of Sarasota) and consultant travel expenses.”
- Slavin — $25,722.25, which includes a professional fee of $16,595 and a not-to-exceed expense budget of $9,127.25.
City staff had agreed to pay Colin Baenziger & Associates $35,000, the News Leader learned through a public records request earlier this year.
The following are the answers that each firm provided to the questions posed by the City Commission as part of the selection process:
