Bare says May 26 Special Meeting is still on

Pensacola City Council President Charles Bare says the May 26 Special Council Meeting will take place as planned, despite pressure from Mayor Ashton Hayward and his chief financial officer to cancel the meeting for the council and public to discuss Hayward’s investigation and termination of Fire Chief Matt Schmitt and Deputy Fire Chief Joe Glover.

“I’m still planning on having the meeting,” said Bare on “Pensacola Speaks” Tuesday afternoon. “I just think that the administration doesn’t want to talk about it, and the Council needs to give the public a chance to speak.”

He added, “I think the real risk is the mayor actually, I think he’s probably damaging our probability of having risk management insurance in the future more than the Council is at this point.”

Bare was referring to a memo from CFO Dick Barker to City Administrator Eric Olson that warned of public discussions of the terminations by the City Council could lead to the city’s insurance carrier not covering any claims filed by the chiefs.

“In my 35-year career with the City of Pensacola, I do not recall any public meeting held to discuss employees dismissed by a City Manager or Mayor of the City of Pensacola,” wrote Barker. “Certainly, from a risk management perspective, it would be best to maintain the past practice of not publicly discussing employee-related matters. As the Chief Financial Officer of the City of Pensacola, it is important that you, the mayor and the city council be informed of the potential risks associated with this matter.”

The Council President explained that the council voted to have the special meeting at its May 12 regular meeting. The report on the fire chiefs had only been made public for two days.

He said, “This was something that came after I added on the item to discuss the report, just having a preliminary discussion about the report that came out, and Council agreed that they needed more time to think about it, and read over the documents, and take that time to spend more documents released. There was an agreement amongst Council that we needed to have a special meeting.”

Bare said, “No one objected to that. It’s not like I’m acting alone. I know the mayor has called out those of us who have caused trouble, I imagine it’s me, but in this case the entire Council did not object to having a special meeting.”

Last week, Mayor Hayward published an “open letter” on the city’s ‘Transparent Pensacola’ web page criticizing the council for holding the meeting, calling it “ill-advised” and “a staged rally for the terminated employees.”

The Council President said that Hayward did not contact him directly about his concerns about the meeting. In fact, the mayor has not discussed the investigation or terminations with him since Hayward received the report on April 29.

“I heard about (open letter) first from Don Kraher (council executive),” said Bare. “The mayor did not talk to me about that whatsoever.”

He found the letter to be insulting.

“Their definition of transparency is having a webpage where the mayor can actually insult the governing body, and tell us that we shouldn’t do this, or we shouldn’t do that,” said Bare. “We have as much at stake in that website as he does, but he’s able to attack through an open letter on that website. That’s offensive to me.”

Though Mayor Hayward said in his letter that he was willing to meeting with council members to discuss the fire chiefs, Bare said meetings with the mayor are rare.

“It’s interesting, I have had three meetings with the mayor, all three I have asked for,” he said. “He has never asked for a meeting with me, although he has said before he has an open door, sometimes it takes me a week or so to be able to meet with him.”

Bare said, “The fact is, the charter says very clearly that we have the ability to discuss things with the mayor, but if he chooses not to come to the meeting, then he is violating his charter duty to attend meetings and therefore we can not talk to him. I don’t think that the charter review commission would have put our power in there to be able to discuss things with the mayor knowing that he wouldn’t attend any meetings.”

The Council President said the daily newspaper can call for mayor and city council to cooperative more, but that’s difficult when the mayor won’t come to meetings and discuss issues.

“He told us during a Council meeting, he wouldn’t debate. He wasn’t going to sit there and debate with us. Well what do you think we do here?” said Bare.

“That’s the point of these meetings — to debate, share ideas, and opinions, and if you’re not willing to do that, I don’t know why…,” he said. “I think it’s a duty for him to be there. He thinks it’s a power, I think it’s a duty.”

The Council President said he has had success discussing issues like the John Sunday House with the city administrator. However, Olson prefers such discussion not be done using emails.

“I am able to meet with the administrator, but I have had issues where I wanted an answer and I sent an email, and the administrator called me back, or sent me an email saying, ‘That would be better handled as a phone call,’” said Bare.

“They don’t necessarily want things as a public record, whereas I do,” he said. “As a public official, I think we need to talk about them in public.”

Bare added, “The mayor can say all he wants, ‘Yeah I have an open door. Come Council members, talk to me.’ But the public doesn’t have the benefit of hearing that. That’s that more healthy relationship.”