Amidst finger pointing and blame games, Milton lands on police chief as interim city manager

If anything was accomplished amidst all the name calling, finger pointing and temper tantrums Thursday at the first meeting of the Milton City Council since its effort to hire a city manager went south, it may have been that it was universally accepted the community as a whole needs to get its act together.

Police Chief Tony Tindell agreed at the meeting to step in as interim to replace outgoing City Manager Randy Jorgenson sometime in the timeframe of Aug. 21 and serve dual roles for the city until such time as a new search for a chief administrator can be successfully conducted.

"I would think that the best chance we have to recruit a quality candidate that has faith and trust in us is to get our house in order," Mayor Heather Lindsay said.

Council members also agreed to turn to a head hunting firm to assist the city in finding future city manager prospects.

The latest: Milton's top prospect for city manager soured on the job in just a few days. Here's why

Signs of trouble: "Undercurrent" of ill will nearly blows up Milton city manager negotiations

There was no shortage of local residents present at Thursday's agenda workshop meeting to remind members of the council and city staff just what an embarrassing week the last one has been. Scott Collins, an experienced city government employee last employed as a city manager in Fairview, Tennessee, was an unanimous 8-0 choice of the council to take over upon Jorgenson's Sept. 5 retirement.

"You had the right guy, 100% you had the right guy. On an 8-0 vote you had the right guy," resident Jerry Couey said. "As a council you ought to be shocked. You need to find out what happened. This needs to be fixed."

By all accounts, including his own, Collins was eager to accept the Milton job, but within just a few days of the council vote to hire him he sent an email to the mayor, Councilman Mike Cusack and Buzz Eddy, who had worked in his recruitment, to let them know he had decided to pull his name from consideration.

"There is a coordinated undercurrent effort to make either this contract negotiation or my initial contract term unsuccessful," the email said. "As such, I have decided to withdraw."

At Thursday's meeting Mayor Lindsay credited herself and City Clerk Dawn Molinero with successfully convincing Collins to reconsider the Saturday email in which he rejected the city's job offer, but that reconsideration was short lived as Collins this week notified the city he'd decided to retire from government work.

In a recent interview, Collins did not specify where the undercurrent he referred to in his initial email to the city had come from other than to say he'd been put off by confusion about who from the city should be involved in contract negotiations and pressure from members of the public with a political agenda.

In text messages City Attorney Alex Andrade presented to the council Thursday, though, it appeared much more clear that the public had a great deal more to do with his deciding to step back than Collins had originally divulged.

The text messages Andrade presented showed Collins telling him "the pot stirring around there started 15 minutes after the Zoom meeting." The Zoom meeting was held several days ahead of Collins being chosen as the top candidate for the city manager position.

"There has been so much nonsense coming my way that I gave up trying to make sense of anything," Collins also said in his conversation with Andrade. "Honestly I sort of wished I had never applied. It's been too much."

Some in attendance Thursday didn't want to buy into the notion that members of community had played a role in Collins' decision to withdraw his name. Lindsay was one of them.

"I hope one day we do get the whole story. I received a different set of facts from Mr. Collins," Lindsay told Andrade after he'd presented the text messages. "Nothing he said to me implicated any member of the public ... his reservations did not relate to political agendas."

Many in attendance, including some on the council, insinuated that there were pressures from city staff and possibly Councilman Jeff Snow to prevent Collins from accepting the city manager's job.

"Scott Collins was run off because they (city staff) don't want someone to dig deep and find the dirty laundry," local resident Pam Mitchell said.

Much discussion revolved around Councilman Mike Cusack's having been appointed, by unanimous vote of the council, to serve as the board's liaison in contract negotiations with Collins.

Thanks but no thanks: Milton City Manager candidate Scott Collins withdraws from consideration for the second time

Cusack maintained that Andrade had prevented him from true involvement in the talks with the city manager candidate, and at one point during the negotiation process he went to the city clerk to notify the City Council of his misgivings.

On Thursday, Cusack acknowledged having to spoken to Collins during the negotiation period without Andrade's consent or knowledge.

"I had a conversation with Mr. Collins before any contract negotiations were made by our attorney," he said.

Cusack said Collins had told him he wouldn't speak to Andrade without Cusack being included on the phone call, but Cusack had instructed him to be cooperative. Andrade questioned why Cusack hadn't consulted him prior to speaking to Collins.

"If I wasn't needed to be part of the negotiations, I should have been told to stand down," Andrade said.

After Collins withdrew his name from consideration the first time, Lindsay had called a special meeting whose purpose was stated as "Whether City Attorney Communications Caused Withdrawal of Application of Scott Collins."

Following Thursday's meeting, at shortly before midnight, the mayor sent an email to Andrade chastising him for failing to take responsibility for the breakdown in communications with Collins.

"Notwithstanding the information you shared today. What Scott told me on Monday left no room for doubt: your communication was a motivating factor in his email on Saturday ... There are choices you made that made this situation worse than it had to be," the email said. "You have spent considerable time and energy accusing council of violating a policy that does not apply, which further stoked mistrust among the council, and characterizing the public as being at fault."

Previously: Milton City Council reduces its list of city manager candidates from 43 to eight.

Andrade on Friday went to Jorgenson to report the mayor's email.

"This is abusive and defamatory behavior, and it is unacceptable in a professional work environment. As Mr. Collins’ texts with me and his quoted comments in the PNJ confirm, I did nothing wrong or inappropriate," Andrade's response said. "I serve at the pleasure of the council. If the council cannot protect staff from abusive behavior like this from disgruntled council members, I do not believe the city can function properly."

On Friday Andrade was adamant that he had played what he believed was his role as city attorney in a good faith effort to bring Collins on board at the city. He said he has asked for an increase in the pay he receives to serve as Milton's city attorney.

"I'm paid a very low hourly rate to be a city attorney," he said. "I'm not paid a very low rate to be a whipping boy."

Councilman Snow did not attend Thursday's meeting and Councilman Casey Powell stormed out after Lindsay broke her own rules of decorum by interrupting the comments of a member of the public. Before he left, Powell read a statement in which he opined that his reading of public records compiled during the Collins' affair led him to conclude Lindsay was "look(ing) for a council member or member of staff to blame" for the situation.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Milton Police Chief Tony Tindall to be interim city manager