Outgoing city administrator fired

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August 31, 2011 - 12:00 AM

Iola City Administrator Judy Brigham — two weeks away from celebrating her retirement after 32 years as an Iola employee — was fired Tuesday evening.
Iola City Council members, in an adjourned meeting purportedly to discuss Iola’s 2012 budget, made the announcement after meeting privately in an executive session for 80 minutes.
The council voted 6-1 for the immediate termination of Brigham’s employment. Council members Kendall Callahan, Beverly Franklin, Steve French, Jim Kilby, Ken Rowe and Scott Stewart voted in favor of the termination. Don Becker was opposed. Joel Wicoff was unable to attend the meeting.
No reason was given for Brigham’s termination.
French, who made the motion to fire Brigham, said all inquiries about the matter should be sent to Mayor Bill Shirley.
“The council found a reason to let Judy go,” Shirley said, declining to comment further.
Shirley also declined to say whether Brigham’s firing was due to the city’s prolonged budgeting process.
Council members rejected earlier this month a spending plan for 2012 after several meetings, citing in part differing numbers on various funds.
Brigham, who sat in the audience with family, said she did not know why she had been let go.
“I think it sends a scary message to all long-term workers with the city, to let them know that the council can let them go just days from retirement,” Brigham said.

THE FIRING may carry financial implications for Brigham, who estimated she could lose about $40,000 in her retirement benefits package as a result.
Brigham said she had accumulated about 900 hours of sick leave in her more than 31 years of employment and would have collected a lump sum payment equivalent to half or 450 hours worth, a figure estimated at about $18,000.
“I don’t know if I will get any of that because my contract was terminated,” she told the Register this morning. “I should have asked at the meeting, but I was more shocked at that point than anything.”
Brigham also stands to lose her employee health insurance coverage, which she could have continued had she retired from the city in good standing. She also had been due a longevity bonus had she been allowed to stay with the city until Sept. 16, which would have been her 32nd anniversary as an Iola employee.
“It does seem to be a bit cruel to be terminated this close to retirement,” she said. “I don’t know if the council understood what all of that meant. I just need to find out.”
The firing came about eight months after the former Iola City Commission — which was replaced by the existing city council in April — had indicated that Brigham’s contract would not be extended past March because of the pending change in city governance.
Shirley, then on the commission, had said his concern was having a city administrator on staff because the mayor’s duties in the new mayor-council form of government would mirror the administrator’s.
Shirley reversed course in a Jan. 24 commission meeting after the city learned from the Kansas League of Municipalities that it was permissible for city councils to have both a “strong” mayor and a city administrator.
The new council still must determine whether to adjust either the mayor’s or administrator’s duties under the new form of government.
Since he became mayor, Shirley has insisted that Brigham report to him with a 5 p.m. phone call of her day’s accomplishments each work day.

COINCIDENTALLY, Brigham’s firing was followed in short order by the council’s decision to approve the city’s $28 million spending plan for 2012, after $14,377 was pared from the budget.
City Administrator Carl Slaugh, hired in July as Brigham’s successor, said he was hesitant to cut staffing or services so he recommended the city cut the $14,377 from what it pays annually to Van Scoyoc, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Since 2007, the city has paid Van Scoyoc $60,000 annually.
The firm has played a hand in the city receiving since then more than $900,000 in federal funds for improvements in Iola’s sewer lagoons, drinking water and wastewater pipes and the public library. Van Scoyoc also assisted in Iola’s quest to receive millions of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency following the 2007 flood.
Paring $14,377 was equivalent to shaving about four-tenths of a mill from the city’s property tax levy, Slaugh said, in an effort to keep it at the 2011 figure, 37.767 mills. That number may change slightly later this fall after the city’s final assessed valuation is determined. The valuation dictates how much revenue is generated through the tax levies.
The budget, six days late, was approved with a 7-0 vote.

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