BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
A day before she was to be sworn in as Starke’s new city clerk, Chrissy Thompson was still fighting for the full power she says the city charter provides her position.
According to Thompson, the city — in its recent adoption of its city manager ordinance — had placed her on an island alone.
The ordinance, which eliminates the previous division of duties between a chief administrative officer and a general manager of utilities, restores Drew Mullins as city manager, but with all the financial oversight preciously given to the chief administrative officer. That oversight was once held by the city clerks who came before, including Thompson’s husband, who served through 2021.
Earlier this year, in the absence of a clerk and the anticipation voters would eliminate the position from the charter, the commission assigned those duties to the CAO and have now assigned them to the city manager.
Mullins said Monday that Thompson’s role as city clerk would provide checks and balances on what takes place in finance in addition to her role as custodian of records and secretary to the board. She will have no staff of her own, he said. Instead, Lisa Heeder, who also ran to be city clerk, will work under Finance Director James Hughes along with the other employees in the billing and payroll office.
Heeder, who worked for past clerks, was delegated charter responsibilities such as taking minutes at meetings and fulfilling public records requests. Mullins said Thompson would take over Heeder’s roles. The clerk is the custodian of records per the charter, but unlike past clerks, Thompson won’t have staff to assign those responsibilities.
Thompson has repeatedly said she does not oppose the city manager or the ordinance reinstating the position, except as it relates to her charter assigned role as treasurer. She appealed again to the commission Sept. 9 when the board finalized its adoption, saying as the city treasurer, she couldn’t justify not having supervision of the finance department.
“As years have been passed, the clerk has always been over that department. If you solely give this position and all departments to Drew, then you have no checks and balances. Then I am not responsible to the people that voted me in,” Thompson said. Voters chose to keep an elected city clerk, and if the commission wanted to change the clerk’s charter duties, that should have been on the ballot as well, she added.
Thompson told the commission her attorney advised her to try and talk things out, but she would make a legal stand if that was not possible. She also read a letter into the record, saying she would not be signing any checks or authorizing any other transaction without working knowledge of the city’s overall finances. Under the ordinance, she was not confident she would have that access.
“No responsible official would assume such a financial liability without the control and related processes to the personnel,” she said, promising legal action if the ordinance was approved in its original form.
“If the ordinance is proceeded in the second reading under current its form, I will be left with no choice but to formally have litigation against the city of Starke commissioners for violation of city charter. I want to make it very clear that I want what is absolutely best for the city of Starke now and for generations to come. My intent is not to create conflict, but to protect the integrity of our charter, maintain checks and balances and ensure no single individual in this city has unchecked control over multiple departments.”
Commissioner Bob Milner recognized the commission needed to comply with the charter but also supported the ordinance, saying the question would be how to apply it practically. Commissioner Janice Mortimer acknowledged things have worked differently in the past, but things changed under the former CAO for the sake of “efficiency and accountability.”
“Just because we’ve been doing it that way for all these years isn’t exactly what the charter is saying,” she said.
Commissioner Danny Nugent, who has supported restoring past authority to the city clerk, said that long past is why Thompson’s argument will stand up in court.
“I think it’s going to hold up in court. They’re going to be right and we’re going to be wrong,” he said.
“Wagons worked in 1870, but people aren’t riding in wagons now,” Mayor Andy Redding responded. Things evolved as they did in the absence of a city clerk, he said. But the duties of treasurer, which belong to the clerk, are different from charting the financial course of the city, which is the job of the city manager, he said. The treasurer keeps track of the money but doesn’t have a role in deciding how it is spent.
“Ordinances and even the charter have not been updated and reviewed and kept up to date, right? Because, like I said, we rode in wagons at one time, and they work, but we’re not in a wagon now. Our city is now at a budget of $54 million and it shouldn’t be up to the clerk to keep up with everything,” he said. “That’s why we have a city manager now.”
The ordinance passed 3-1, with Nugent dissenting.
Thompson said a meeting Monday with Mullins, their attorneys and a government attorney, did not shift the city’s position.
“I just told them as plain as I could that I’m just there to defend the charter and what I was elected for. The citizens wanted a clerk,” she said, saying she is the one requiring there be checks and balances.
“Anybody with any good sense or any good public servant would not sign something they don’t have access to,” she said of signing checks. Their response, she said, was to suggest the city manager be allowed to sign checks going forward as he has while functioning as interim clerk.
“And I said, ‘Have you absolutely lost your mind?’ Because that would give ultimate control. And we’re not a dictator. That’s not how city government works,” she said.
Thompson was waiting on correspondence from the city attorney outlining the duties assigned to the clerk. She had already received a flow chart which assigns new titles to the finance employees and places them under the manager’s supervision. The incoming clerk said she has been placed on an island by herself.
“I’m not saying I have to have a big staff. I’m not saying I have to have a whole lot of anything. But I do have to have access to what I can see, and I can’t have one person over everything that is just showing me what they want me to see. It has to be the big picture. Everybody has to be able to see it all. And it should be everybody,” she said.
