A knife at our throats…How George Gretsas is holding us Hostage-

 

A knife at our throats…How Fort Lauderdale City Manager George Gretsas is holding us hostage-

After a revelation made last week at our City Commission meeting, (and after further investigation), I have discovered that City Manager George Gretsas has (over the last year) built an “employment insurance policy” for himself at our expense.

During the most recent local election campaign (when I was running for Mayor) I made it no secret that I thought George Gretsas should be removed as City Manager. Apparently Gretsas felt he needed to construct for himself an insurance policy in case I won the election. He began to establish a set of new employment contracts with his hand-picked Department Heads.

Background:  Back in 2004 (a scant five years ago before Gretsas), we had 11 City Departments, with each Department Head having a 2-3 year Employment Contract. Here they are:

 

·        Administrative Services

·        City Attorney

·        City Clerk

·        City Manager

·        Community & Economic Development

·        Finance

·        Fire-Rescue

·        Office of Professional Standards

·        Parks and Recreation

·        Police

·        Public Services.

We had those Departments for years and were able to provide good services to our residents. Then, in August 2004, Gretsas became our City Manager. He started to grow the number of Departments and Department Heads to what we have today: Twenty-One, almost double what we had a few short years ago!

 

·        Building Services

·        Business Enterprises

·        City Attorney

·        City Auditor

·        City Clerk

·        City Commission

·        City Manager

·        Economic Development

·        Finance

·        Fire-Rescue

·        Human Resources

·        Information Systems

·        Office of Management and Budget

·        Office of Professional Standards

·        Parking and Fleet

·        Parks and Recreation

·        Planning and Zoning

·        Police

·        Procurement

·        Public Information

·        Public Works

Why did this happen? How did this happen? Did our population almost double? No. Apparently, he wanted to build a bigger staff and put in more of his “yes-men”, for more control. I requested all the Employment Contracts from the City. I received them and have reviewed them. This is what I’ve learned:

In just a four-month period during the election campaign (Oct 2008 to Jan 2009) thirteen of these 21 contracts were updated and signed, without the knowledge of the Commssion! In October 2008, Gretsas signed 5 new employment contracts, in November: 1, December: 2 and January 2009: 5 more. Thirteen new employment contracts in all with his hand picked “yes-men”. Many of these new contracts now don’t expire until 2011. In each of those contracts, he gave the employee their own automobile, free health insurance, and a fat severance package. The average severance package (with benefits) is over $50,000. Gretsas himself will get over $120,000 if he is let go before the expiration of his term in August 2010.

Now that they have these severance packages (I’ve added it up. The total cost to Fort Lauderdale, is over $1 million dollars), they are legally entitled to receive those monies if they are terminated. And that was how Gretsas built his “insurance policy” for staying on as City Manager. His logic apparently is that if he gets terminated, he would “fire” his friends as he left, giving them those severance packages and creating an additional & costly liability that taxpayers would have to pick up. Knowing about that additional cost would make it more difficult for any new Commission to consider getting rid of “King George”.

Essentially, George Gretsas has fashioned a knife of sorts and is holding it against the neck of us taxpayers. And the unfortunate part of this is that the knife is still there! If we fire Gretsas now (or at anytime before his contract expires in August of 2010) and give him his $120K severance package, he could immediately “fire” his cronies so they’d get their severance packages too, costing us dearly. Remember, these are people who, (for the most part), owe their allegiance to Gretsas, not the City, so they would be leaving anyway. Even if the Commission does nothing about removing Gretsas prior to the end of his contract, he could still hurt taxpayers on his way out, (even on his last day), by “firing” these friends of his, initiating these fat severance packages that we would have to pay out. He’d be giving Fort Lauderdale taxpayers a final “one-fingered New York salute” as he left.

It appears to me that we have a City Manager with all the morals and ethics of a common street thug.

In this economy (aka: the real world) with 20% of our population unemployed or under employed, seeing this type of behavior by a City Manager is outrageous. Residents here in Fort Lauderdale every day are worrying about keeping their jobs. Most of us don’t have “Severance Packages”; many residents here have already lost their jobs and are in danger of losing their homes; people are worried about higher health care costs, higher drug prices, higher mortgage rates, higher taxes and fees that our City charges them. Many people are having to do without. Yet here we have this guy, threatening to create more financial pain for us taxpayers unless he gets to keep his job with his $330,000 a year compensation package. Shameful!

What to do? Click on this email address for the Mayor:   jack.seiler@fortlauderdale.gov  and paste the following comments (or use comments of your own):

Mayor Seiler: The behavior of our City Manager to try to cause additional financial harm to our City (by giving his friends new employment contracts with fat severance packages) is outrageous. You MUST do something quickly to protect the interests of us the residents and taxpayers of Fort Lauderdale, especially in this economy. Get rid of “King George”, as soon as possible!

If you like, you can also add the email addresses of the following District Commissioners in the cc: section of that same email:

broberts@fortlauderdale.gov

crodstrom@fortlauderdale.gov

bdubose@fortlauderdale.gov

rrogers@fortlauderdale.gov

Mayor Seiler received your messages last time. Based upon all the email messages he got from us, (in the hundreds!!) he changed his mind about renewing Gretsas’ contract. Let’s make sure he gets this message loud and clear this time too!

Earl Rynerson