Citizens will be heard on City Administrator Eric Olson

Mayor Ashton Hayward wanted to move forward. He wanted the discussion on his city administrator’s phone call to the bosses of North Hill Preservation Association president to end.

After all, he solely controls the employment fate of Eric Olson. The “No Confidence” vote has no real impact.

However, what he missed was the vote itself wasn’t the most important part of Councilman Charles Bare’s motion.

No, the important part was the citizens of Pensacola being heard. Bare and his fellow Council members Brian Spencer, Sherri Myers, P.C. Wu, Gerald Wingate and Jewel Cannada-Wynn understood that. Council President Andy Terhaar and Vice President Larry Johnson failed to grasp that point.

Reporter Jeremy Morrison attended the meeting. This is his report. Pay close attention to Hayward’s comments at the end of the article. He still doesn’t understand the issue and actually faults Melanie Nichols, the North Hill president, for not calling him.

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Olson’s No-Confidence Conversation, Part One
by Jeremy Morrison

Last week, Pensacola City Councilman Charles Bare made it known he intended to seek the vote of no confidence following the revelation that City Administrator Eric Olson contacted a citizen’s employer regarding the individual’s communications with the city. The councilman was successful in securing the six necessary votes to have the item slated for Thursday’s council meeting agenda.

“I have questions of whether he is the right candidate for the city administrator,” Bare told the council Monday. “He has maintained that what he was doing was the right thing, and the fact is, constituent services are not even part of his job description.”

Olson contacted Naval Air Station Pensacola, where Melanie Nichols is employed, to alert them to the fact that Nichols was emailing the city from her work email account and request that she cease.

Nichols is president of the North Hill Preservation Association and is in regular communication with city staff. She has since maintained she had permission to use the email account to correspond with the city and has charged that Olson targeted her due to her opposition to the replacement and expansion of a radio tower in the Long Hollow Storm Water Basin.

Local media, as well as the First Amendment Foundation, has been critical of Olson’s move, describing it as “chilling” and “beyond the pale,” and arguing that such actions could be viewed as an attempt to silence citizen input. Several council members seemed to share that assessment of the city’s top administrator.

“I think the first thing that went through my mind was a mixture of shock and bewilderment,” said Councilman P.C. Wu. “It’s not the government’s government. The government belongs to the people. If you do anything to limit people’s access to that government, you’re on a very dangerous slope.”

Though he didn’t approve of Olson’s actions, the councilman initially shied from voting to pursue a no-confidence vote. He painted it as fruitless, as the city administrator answers to the mayor and such a vote would carry no weight.

“It really has no impact on the mayor, because the mayor is going to make his own decision,” Wu said, adding he’d be more inclined toward the ornamental dress-down if the administrator acted in such a manner again — “if it happens again I will not be in the parade, I will be leading the parade.”

Councilwoman Sherri Myers also expressed concern about the effectiveness and end goal of such a venture.

“What is this going to fix?” she asked.

“I’m not gonna say this is absolutely going to fix anything,” Bare conceded. “The mayor is going to make his own decision.”

Myers suggested the council instead direct their discontent toward Mayor Ashton Hayward and lobbied for amending the city charter to allow council more say in the city’s administrative structure. She panned the meaningfulness of taking a no-confidence vote on the administrator.

“I think Mr. Olson already knows we don’t have confidence in him, given what has happened here,” Myers said.

Councilman Brain Spencer urged his fellow board members to hold the conversation for Thursday. He said he supported its continuation in order to give the matter a more appropriate venue for public participation, as Thursday’s meeting is a formal council meeting instead of an agenda work session.

“I’m hoping this Thursday night,” Spencer added, “we’re able to have a conversation that the mayor, whether he attends or not, can take under advisement.”

During the discussion Mayor Hayward had, in fact, entered the meeting room. He took a seat near the back of the crowded room and listened to the debate. He was never asked to weigh in.

While Councilman Spencer’s give-the-public-a-forum angle swayed both Wu and Myers — “I think Councilman Spencer really hit the nail on the head with this one,” said Myers — the body’s president and vice president did not support the effort to continue the no-confidence conversation at the formal meeting.

“I do think people make mistakes,” President Andy Terharr said. “This is not a pattern of behavior for Mr. Olson.”

“If the citizens have a problem with Mr. Olson and his behavior, I think they should direct it to the mayor,” said Vice President Larry B. Johnson.

Terharr gave the city administrator an opportunity to address the issue prior to council taking a vote on continuing the matter to Thursday. Olson spoke about his commitment to public service and desire to “help make Pensacola a better place,” and said the incident had been misread by the public.

“I think that certainly the perception of my actions has over taken the facts,” Olson said.

The Navy veteran also told council his action wasn’t done with any ill-will intended and that he regretted the negative attention it had garnered.

“Why would I want to do this? There’s no reason. The last thing I wanted to do is give the city of Pensacola, the mayor, this council a black eye,” Olson said. “I think the city is moving in a positive direction. I think that’s what the people should know. And when that’s not the headline, we all pay a price.”

Following the administrator’s comments, several members of the public spoke to the subject. The speakers, connecting Olson’s recent actions with, as Dottie Dubuisson put it, “a pattern we have experienced as a community,” evoked applause several times, most notably when requesting that the administrator issue a formal apology to Nichols.

The final public speaker arrived to the meeting just in time to make his comments. LuTimothy May, recently let go as the city’s community outreach administrator, stepped to the microphone still out of breath from his hurried trip into the room.

“I drove 25 miles to get here and speak,” he gasped, urging the council to place the discussion on their agenda.

A few minutes later, out by the elevators, May elaborated. He said his decision to come and speak at the meeting was made following a conversation he had with Nichols.

Why?

“To show Melanie we appreciate what she does,” May explained.

The former city staffer — attributing his firing to “organizational restructuring by Eric Olson” — said that the incident involving Nichols was symptomatic of a larger issue within city hall.

“It’s a culture,” May said. “There’s a culture that’s been created that suggests these behaviors are acceptable.”

A few feet away, Mayor Hayward talked with a reporter from the local television news. He explained how Nichols is a “fantastic” neighborhood volunteer — “you know, she’s always on top of her issues” — how there exist a “difference of opinion” and how “the whole situation is unfortunate.”

“Perception is out there,” Hayward said, “and that’s unfortunate.”

“What are you gonna do?” the reporter began wrapping up her interview.

“Well, I’m not going to let Mr. Olson go,” Hayward replied, adding that he found the prospect of Thursday’s public forum promising. “That’s one thing in five years I’ve learned, public forums are great.”

Stepping away from the camera, Hayward took time for a couple of quick interviews with reporters from both Inweekly and PNJ. He described Olson’s actions as benign, as “just reaching out to let another government agency know” and said there are “two sides to the story.”

The mayor categorized assertions that Olson had attempted to “silence a citizen” as “absolutely false.” He also questioned why Nichols didn’t contact him directly.

“Why didn’t she pick up the phone and call the mayor like she’s always done in the past,” he wondered.

Hayward praised Olson’s community involvement, mentioning his administrator’s participation with Habitat for Humanity and Hospice. He said he and his top employee had discussed the scenario involving Nichols, and that a do-over might be done differently.

“I think Eric would have probably done things differently knowing that it would create this perception in the community,” Hayward said. “Maybe he would communicate directly to Melanie about this.”

The mayor said he planned to attend Thursday’s council meeting to listen to the discussion pertaining to the no-confidence vote in his administrator, but declined to offer his personal assessment of Olson’s actions.

Hayward said, “I think going down this path — this is right and this is wrong — everybody is going to have their opinion.”