Residents raise questions about shared manager proposition
by Angie Asam-Staff Writer
It is no secret that Rogers City and Onaway are exploring the option of sharing a city manager.
Tuesday evening the Rogers City council offered the city manager position in Rogers City to Joe Hefele, Onaway’s city manager, but they also passed a motion to continue to explore the option of sharing a city manager.
Monday the Onaway city commission met and during public comment some residents raised some questions and concerns over the idea of sharing a manager.
All of the concerns centered around the fact that one of the things suggested when the city was looking at the budget and elimination of the Onaway police department was to have the city manager be a part time instead of full time position.
At that time they were told it wasn’t possible, however, now a year later it seemed that was exactly what the commission was looking at doing.
“I have thought about what has happened this past year and I am not even angry anymore. I am saddened by what has happened to our small community in one short year. Friendships were lost, jobs were lost; this community was divided like never before. Last year business owners and citizens filled this same room to capacity to ask these same city commissioners and same city manager to listen to the options they had for you. One option to save money was to put the city manager to part time, and also have a part time police officer. The police officer was absolutely in favor of cutting his pay just to keep his job plus he offered to be on call 24/7 for emergencies at no extra charge to the city. You said absolutely no way could this town be run with a part-time city manager. You were asked to at least consider it and try it for a while to see if it worked. You all agreed that going part time with the city manager position would not work and was not going to happen. Now less than a year later you are considering it,” said Judy Shaloy.
“A year later after these friendships have been lost, jobs have been eliminated and after three or more years of looking for a new job the city manager finally has a bite on one, and now said it is possible to run this city for 15 hours per week and has your blessing. What has changed from then until now? The change I see is that a year ago our city manager did not have another possible job offer; he was not willing to give up anything that was a benefit to him whether or not it was a benefit to this city. If you would have tried the one suggestion this town would never had to go through the turmoil it has gone through in the last year. There would have never been two recall elections. You threw away one man’s 26-year law enforcement career without the blink of an eye,” said Shaloy.
Connie Gibson was the next citizen to speak and echoed the same comments of Shaloy, wondering what has changed in a year and citing the fact that if they would have looked at the idea when it was suggested things wouldn’t have gotten the way they did. “It is sad that friendships were lost and jobs were eliminated. It never ever had to happen that way,” said Gibson.
Lonnie Lennox also spoke, wondering when the city commission had discussed this idea of sharing a city manager with Rogers City as she had never heard it at a meeting. She was informed that the commission held a special meeting on Feb. 24 that was posted to discuss it.
THE CITIZENS sent the message that they believed it was Hefele behind all this, convincing the commission a year ago that he couldn’t run the city part time and needed to be full time and now turni
Commissioner Bernie Schmeltzer clarified things for the citizens during his commissioner report.
“It was not Joe Hefele that suggested this. Actually it was me that suggested it when I realized we would probably lose Joe if he got the Rogers City job. At that point I was wondering if he would contract with us for a while to help us with paperwork,” said Schmeltzer.
Schmeltzer also discussed the fact the city twice asked for a Headlee rollback that was defeated by voters and hurt the budget. The city has cut workers in the department of public works.
“We have to make cuts because we can’t raise any revenues. We can’t come levy mills, we need support of the people. The only thing we can do is live within our budget. When I realized that Joe was going to apply, and I think he is a strong candidate, and if he were to get it we lose him completely. So we decided to explore the option of sharing a manager, that doesn’t mean we are going to do it,” said Schmeltzer.