If Small-Toney doesnâ€t resign, then Mayor Edna Jackson will find herself entertaining a motion Thursday to fire the city manager. Itâ€s going to pass. Jackson has the votes. Otherwise, she wouldnâ€t have asked for Small-Toneyâ€s walking papers a week ago as the price for the city managerâ€s continued failing performance.

The only question is the margin.

Hereâ€s what the split should be: 9-0. This is one time the entire council must stand together, for its own sake and the sake of the city for the next three years.

A 6-3 vote will get the job done, of course. The conventional wisdom breaks those numbers down this way: The mayor, Mayor Pro Tem Van Johnson and council members Carol Bell, Tom Bordeaux, Mary Ellen Sprague and Tony Thomas voting for termination, with council members John Hall, Mary Osborne and Estella Shabazz opposing.

But some major decisions should go down with an overwhelming mandate. This is one of them. It would show unity and stability at a time when City Hall is on vibrate.

And another editorial on Thursday:

Todayâ€s vote, assuming it comes, should be 9-0 to accept Ms. Small-Toneyâ€s resignation. Then itâ€s time to heal, move on and do the publicâ€s business.

After the vote, yet another editorial characterized the three “no” votes this way:

As far as Ms. Small-Toneyâ€s resignation is concerned, itâ€s disappointing that City Council didnâ€t accept it unanimously Thursday and stand together. The “no” votes cast by council members John Hall, Mary Osborne and Estella Shabazz were slaps at the mayor and the city.

Fortunately, their votes didnâ€t matter. The mayor had a majority to make a needed change, fix whatâ€s broken at City Hall and begin to repair the damage.

Credit council members Carol Bell, Tom Bordeaux, Van Johnson, Mary Ellen Sprague and Tony Thomas for backing her up and representing the best interests of the entire community.

Let me take a contrarian view on this whole business of unanimity.

If I had been on council, I would certainly have been voting to accept Small-Toney’s resignation and would have been among those behind the scenes in recent weeks to hasten her exit.

Any lingering support I had for Small-Toney collapsed completely with her decision to divert existing new arena funds to funds for repairs on our existing one. See A new arena for Savannah — should we just throw in the towel? for some of my reasoning.

I think Aldermen Hall, Shabazz, and Osborne made a mistake in continuing to support Small-Toney to the bitter end and to vote not to accept her resignation. I hope they will pay a political price with their constituents, but that’s not up to me — it’s up to their constituents!

All three of those elected citywide — the mayor and both aldermen-at-large — were prepared to fire Small-Toney if necessary, and so were three council members with vastly different districts.

But this is a democracy, and if three members’ consciences tell them to vote one way, they should do it. If they thought Small-Toney deserved more time or if they thought the reasons were not sufficient for dismissal, they should have made that clear — and they did make it clear.

And there are some good signals for many residents in seeing such an open rift among the six black members of council. We tend put a lot of issues in black and white in this town — both literally and figuratively — but no groups are monolithic. No groups consist of members who all agree, and they shouldn’t all agree.

Just like we have in the past lauded our city managers too much, we also have gotten way too hung up on the idea of unanimity. One of the worst council votes taken in recent years — the one to ban 18-20 year-old adults from most live music venues — was unanimous.

Once unanimity itself becomes a goal, we’ve opened the door to groupthink, to ignoring questions, to unsophisticated policy debate.

Mayor Edna Jackson has done a great job the last couple of weeks. She knew she didn’t need unanimity. And she probably knew she wasn’t going to get it. So there was no sense worrying about it or waiting on it. Just assemble a clear majority and forge ahead.

As we move into the process of looking for a permanent city manager, there are going to be lots of disagreements among council members. We might even eventually choose a new city manager on a divided vote.

Nothing wrong with that. Maybe a city manager chosen by a divided council will be especially aware of the need for bridge-building, conciliation, and humility.

I’m unclear at the moment whether that resignation was actually tendered, although I’m assuming it was. Mayor Jackson stated that no official actions could be taken at this specially called meeting today. Regrettably, the meeting is ending with some angry and irrational comments from community members who are bringing up some old, old, old news.

I was among those who did not think Small-Toney was the most qualified of the four finalists for the city manager position. But that didn’t necessarily mean that she wasn’t qualified — and I thought it entirely possible that she would be able to do the job just fine. I was more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But my own support for her has been steadily eroding for a variety of reasons, and collapsed entirely with her decision on Monday to ask the mayor and council to divert almost all the remaining $19 million earmarked for a new arena to renovations of our existing one. I wrote a long post (A new arena for Savannah — should we just throw in the towel?) critiquing that decision, which — to quote a friend of mine — would be like putting a bandaid (a really, really expensive one) on a broken leg (one that will never heal).

Small-Toney also turned out to have a terrible ear for dealing with the press and for understanding the political realities of her position, which was made all the more tenuous by the divisive process through which she was hired. Those problems were compounded by her hiring and then ardent defense of an emergency management director whose resume contained false information, her own questionable handling of travel expenses, a huge mess in the purchasing department that resulted in late payments, and the sudden pulling of an RFP for the new cultural arts center after a number of local firms had spent tens of thousands of dollars preparing their bids.

I’ll add that I never was reassured that Small-Toney understands zoning issues, the peculiar problems of maintaining an historic downtown, or the importance of good city planning generally.

Neither Pat DiGiovanni nor Wayne Cauthen made it to the final round in the selection process for a new city manager last year, but both brought clear strengths to the table. Yes, both had been pushed out of top positions previously, but that’s par for the course among experienced city managers, many of whom eventually lose the support of the elected officials who have hired them.

From my profile last year of Wayne Cauthen:

For the sheer length of his career in public positions, Wayne Cauthen is obviously a serious contender. He has credible experience in business development in the Denver area dating back to the 1980s and also worked in a variety of high-level city posts in Denver. He was also city manager in Kansas City from 2003 to 2009, when he was pushed out by elected officials.

I’ve already read numerous derogatory remarks by Savannahians about Cauthen’s departure from Kansas City — things like: “we don’t want a reject from somewhere else!”

OK, take a deep breath. A city manager is like a top-level coach or a corporate CEO. These folks come and go all the time — some have successful tenures for years before being pushed out, and then go on to success in other positions.

Kansas City is much, much larger than Savannah. It has about 1/2 million residents compared to our 130,000 or so, and the Kansas City metro area is about 2 million compared to our total of less than 400,000. If Cauthen was city manager for six years there, clearly he has some administrative skills. [. . .] Kansas City is a big city, with a pro football team, a symphony, a professional ballet company (I knew several members of it many years ago), and other major attractions. In this glowing column from 2010 in the Kansas City Star, Cauthen reflects on a number of successes there, including preservation, the building of an arena, and the establishment of the Power & Light District.

From my profile of Pat DiGiovanni:

Pat DiGiovanni has been the deputy city manager in San Antonio since 2006. With 1.4 milllion people, San Antonio is one of the largest cities in the country — ten times the size of Savannah. The metro area of over 2 million is almost seven times the size of our metro area. The city is about 60% Hispanic, while Savannah is close to 60% black. I think it’s fair to say that DiGiovanni has spent the last four years working in a large, complex, multi-ethnic city, which seems like an obvious plus.

Lots of search hits come up for the other finalists because of their most recent experience is as a city manager. As a deputy, DiGiovanni is not in the news as much since he has been in San Antonio, although his name is attached to a number of firm but conciliatory statements.

I’m not saying that either of those candidates would have necessarily been perfect fits here either, but they clearly brought credible experience.

Instead of hiring a city manager with strong backgrounds like those, then-Mayor Otis Johnson and the rest of council took a chance on Small-Toney, whom they had gotten to know pretty well in her work as assistant city manager and then as interim city manager. But there was little that I could see to suggest that she would make a good CEO — not a major cog in the bureaucracy but the one on top who has to work with all the city staff, the elected officials, the public, and the press.

It has seemed pretty obvious in recent weeks that Small-Toney’s shortcomings have increasingly alienated members of council. Aldermen Hall, Osborne, and Shabazz voted against going into executive session today, so the city manager still might have had three solid supporters. [Update: Of course, it’s equally likely that they wanted to have a lengthier public comment period before the executive session rather than waiting until after it.]

But the Savannah city council is made up of nine members, not three. And Small-Toney was obviously unable to adjust her management style to keep at least four five of them satisfied.

Last Tuesday, I talked about the woefully inadequate current venue after attending the Elton John concert there.

On Sunday, I took a look at the costs and financing options for comparable new arenas in other cities.

Because of the deep economic downturn, a sharp decrease in the funds available from the current Special Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST), and the reallocation of some of those one percent tax levies, we have only $19 million (I thought it was $22 million until today) earmarked for a new arena, as opposed to the $70+ million in available tax money that was promised when voters approved the current SPLOST back in 2006. In 2006, it was also assumed — not unreasonably — that plenty of other revenues would be available to move ahead with the arena project.

The $20 million currently earmarked has been the subject of a good bit of discussion, including a push from the Sand Gnats owners to build a new stadium on a portion of the Savannah River Landing site.

But now City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney has proposed shifting the vast majority of that money to pay for renovations at the existing Civic Center. From Lesley Conn’s City Manager asks Savannah council to use arena’s tax funds for Civic Center fixes in today’s SMN:

Savannah City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney is asking City Council to consider using most of the $19 million in SPLOST funds set aside for a new arena for extensive renovations of the Civic Center.

“This facility is well beyond its life expectancy,” she said.

She explained it was inefficient to operate, and because of its obvious age, increasingly was losing bookings to newer venues. She added that without a significant investment, the arena “most likely wonâ€t last beyond five years.”

Renovations were projected at $16.2 million. The proposal was put before council members near the end of the first day of a two-day financial overview workshop, and clearly surprised most council members.

Neither Mayor Edna Jackson nor others were quick to embrace the concept, and some rejected it outright.

Even if the entire $16.2 million were spent on the arena and not in other areas of the Civic Center, it couldn’t address the arena’s fundamental inadequacies:

• insufficient capacity for many types of shows
• bad acoustics
• a rectangular design that literally leaves thousands of patrons having to sit with their heads turned
• cramped walkways and public spaces
• uneven steps

The Civic Center’s crappy website doesn’t even list upcoming events in chronological order.

The arena is not a lady who needs a good makeover as Joe Shearouse, director of Public Facilities, Events and Services, apparently said at yesterday’s retreat to discuss finances. It is a fundamentally inadequate facility that needs to be replaced.

And I suppose we could just throw up our hands, say that we can’t replace it for another 20 years or longer, and spend that $20 million on other things.

But that’s likely political suicide: the odds of voters approving another round of SPLOST will fall dramatically if the city scraps its signature initiative used to sell the current SPLOST to voters.

Instead of giving up on the idea of a new arena and deciding that we just won’t have a decent one for years, we need some folks to create a vision for one — and then see if that vision is shared by the majority of Savannahians.

Ideally, this vision would be coming from the city manager’s office. I’m shocked that city officials seems prepared to throw in the towel on something that has been discussed for the last decade.

So maybe the vision needs to come from the mayor and members of council — who seem to be pretty serious about the commitment made to voters. And maybe other economic development folks — like the Chamber and SEDA — should get in the game here too.

At yesterday’s retreat, Small-Toney said that a new arena would cost $150 million.  I don’t know where that number comes from. Comparable arenas have been built in recent years for less than $130 million — in some cases much less. Maybe she’s assuming inflation and construction years from now, but that high estimate simply seems a dodge.

Consider how Evansville paid for its new $127.5 million Ford Center: long-term bonds being paid through the existing food & beverage tax, riverboat revenues, and a sort of tax allocation district (a TIF in this case).

The city of Evansville and the metro area are both small than the city of Savannah and our metro area. Evansville also has dramatically less tourism than we do.

How about someone with the full expertise working up a financing package for a new arena with the various components:

• the existing $20 million
• some funding from the next SPLOST — $30 to $50 million, I’m thinking, would not be a political disaster in the next vote
• a TAD for the immediate area around the arena, depending of course on where it is built — approximately $20 million over a period of decades?
• a portion of the increased revenues from the hotel bed tax as new rooms are added to the city’s capacity — maybe $20 million over 20 years?

A few sources like those and we’re within clear range of paying for a new arena.

Maybe the general population of the city and of the region as a whole don’t want a new arena. Maybe they’ll ultimately reject one as too expensive.

But throwing in the towel right now — as the current city administration seems prepared to do — could be a terrible mistake for the city’s future.

Many residents seem to struggle with getting their heads around how our city manager form of government works, so I’ll begin with a few sentences as background.

The elected mayor and council members are paid relatively little, and they are supposed to have very little if any direct role in the day-to-day workings of the city government. The elected officials hire the city manager, city attorney, and clerk of council, but they don’t hire or fire anyone else. They set policy through ordinances, although often those proposed ordinances are generated by staff.

Still, elected officials have a great deal of power, including creating a vision for the city. A good example right now is the ongoing study of making Savannah a port for cruise ships. The mayor and aldermen are also key in their role as liaisons between voters and the city staff. The council also has final say over a wide variety of individual projects that require zoning code changes or variances. For what it’s worth, I think we should pay our mayor and council more, since the general public expects so much from them.

So what do we really need from a city manager?

First and foremost, we simply need someone who can manage a large number of employees and a wide range of services in a sometimes-unwieldy bureaucratic hierarchy. We don’t really need a city manager who is a visionary, or a great public speaker, or a charismatic leader. We need someone who can keep track of the money coming in and out, can maintain and improve city services, can oversee a small number of major capital improvement projects, and can generally improve quality of life and commerce.

I have been hearing a number of local businesspeople noting improvements under Small-Toney in Savannah’s notoriously business-unfriendly environment.

Also, the city seems on relatively sound budgetary footing, despite the plunging tax revenues of the recession.

The problem for Small-Toney right now is that a variety of recent issues are calling into question even the most basic management abilities. As I noted in an SMN column a few weeks ago, the last-minute withdrawal of an RFP for the new cultural arts center (approved by voters in 2006 as part of the current SPLOST collection) raised serious questions about her grasp of the time and expense that firms put into such bids. Sloppy travel expense reporting raised questions about her management of her own office. A month of problems in paying vendors, which we’ll be hearing a lot more about, also raises questions about the most basic management issues. The hiring and then firing of a highly paid emergency management director with questionable qualifications further called into question some simple management skills — and Small-Toney’s initial response questioned her ability to work with the local press or to understand the political demands of her job.

Of course, during all this, we’re seeing the city thriving in many respects. Tourism is booming; I’ve repeatedly noted major private investments all around the fringes of the core of the city; we’ve seen some really positive moves from city staff regarding community development issues like the recent approval of a system for community gardens.

I also gather that the city of Savannah will soon come out of the dark ages and have a website via which citizens can pay water and trash bills.

Still, on the current trajectory, Small-Toney is eventually going to lose the support of 5 members of council (that’s all it takes) if there is not new confidence in her ability to manage.

I will also note two areas in which Small-Toney has not shown any particular public vision: zoning reform and urban design. When the city manager position became open, an awareness of sound urbanist principles will be at the top of my list, just like it was a couple of years ago.

Now, given the nature of a city manager’s job, it’s not imperative that she or any other city manager have expertise in those areas. She simply has to surround herself with people who understand the importance of sound planning in Savannah’s history and in its future, give those advisors some power and influence, and be willing to take their advice.

But I’ve seen the opposite. For example, Small-Toney has seemed to work against the eventual adoption of the much-needed Unified Zoning Ordinance. Also, she dismantled the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority and has so far not replaced it as promised.

If and when the position comes open again, we should look for someone with a strong background in zoning and planning.

We should also look for a city manager who has a history of facilitating the growth of a wide range of small businesses.

Again, we don’t require a city manager with those particular skills as long as she is simply a good manager surrounding herself with a knowledgable staff.

For what it’s worth, I don’t relish the idea of a divisive, time-consuming, and expensive search for a new city manager. But city managers come and go around the country all the time.

Moments later, council entered executive session for the purpose of discussing personnel.

Ben Johnson had at least three things listed on his resume that called into question both his qualifications and his credibility. He claimed to have a specific certification that he did not have, and he claimed at first to have completed two Masters degrees and later claimed that he he was completing them at specified future dates.

Did no one check the college transcripts before hiring him for a $90,000+ job?

I’m most disturbed, however, by City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney’s memo to City Council from last Monday responding to the issues raised by the Savannah Morning News.

In the memo, Small-Toney acknowledges that council is already aware that the SMN had requested documents surrounding Johnson’s hiring. She apparently did not use the time between the request and the SMN article to check on Johnson’s actual qualifications; instead, on Monday evening, she decided to rationalize the obvious errors in his paperwork and to blame “this apparent campaign being waged by the newspaper.” Those were the closing words of her memo.

That attitude seems perfectly to match the tone noted by alderman Tony Thomas in Conn’s article from Monday:

Alderman Tony Thomas said the questions about Johnsonâ€s background “were entirely unacceptable.” He called the salary increase “highly unusual” and said it is another example of the questions being raised by some members of council about recent hires and salaries.

While personnel decisions fall under the authority of the city manager according to the governmentâ€s charter, Thomas said he believes the actions exceed the confines of her authority because it has direct budgetary impact.

“We are going to have to address these issues with the city manager before the relationship further erodes,” Thomas said.

Councilâ€s previous attempts to learn about unusual pay increases or other personnel matters, he said, “have been met with a defensive posturing that is not conducive to our working relationship.”

Small-Toney did an equally bad job managing the advance media questions in the recent controversy about her sloppy reporting of travel expenditures.

Coupled with revelations that I first heard today about delays and other serious improprieties in the city’s purchasing department (I suspect we’ll read more about those tomorrow in the newspaper), the city manager has had a really bad stretch. There wasn’t anything in the tone of the just completed session to suggest that council is prepared to terminate her, but it’s clear that there are increasingly serious questions about her leadership.

A city manager form of government invests a great deal of power in a single individual, and it’s imperative that that person retain the confidence of a wide swath of the citizenry. Small-Toney’s “defensive posturing” — to quote Tony Thomas — is quickly eroding support among those of us who were willing to give her a chance.

UPDATE to this post at 8:07 p.m.: The city manager has been officially “reprimanded” by the mayor and council; she will be subject to a comprehensive performance review in 3 months.

I praised and briefly summarized the article for Peach Pundit.

In a nutshell:

A review of City Manager Rochelle Small-Toneyâ€s travel expenses for the last 18 months shows she was reimbursed for expenses supposed to be covered by per diems, has been reimbursed without providing final receipts and, in one case, submitted a handwritten note for a $150 reimbursement four months after a trip.

Those practices and others violate several rules within the city of Savannahâ€s travel policy, including requirements that receipts be submitted for reimbursement and that travel reports be submitted five days after a trip.

There’s lots more in Lesley’s piece.

So how should Savannah City Council members respond?

First, let me say that I think there has been a legitimately angry public response. At the same time, some seem to have taken that response to an irrational level. That’s entirely predictable, given Small-Toney’s contentious hiring.

An article in today’s Savannah Morning News hints at some steps that council members can take.

I’ll detail a few specific things here:

• City Council could decide to fire her. If there are other less public concerns about spending and handling of money, then that could be an acceptable move. I do not think, however, that these offenses alone are reason for termination, even if other city employees have been fired for similarly dubious spending in the past.
• City Council needs to look at specific items and take the blame where necessary. Was it a council member who insisted or signed off on the $150 shuttle in Atlanta? Were there other questionable expenditures made with the prior approval of the mayor and council?
• All relevant details, no matter how embarrassing, should be made public immediately. They will all come out eventually.
• Immediately hire an independent auditor to review the books of the City Manager’s office and, while we’re at it, the auditing department itself. Pay for that audit using funds budgeted for the City Manager’s office. Perhaps other cities have systems in place that we could mimic.
• Establish a regular process of such audits — maybe every six months for the next two years and then annually after that.
• It’s possible that employees might need more than five days to file for travel expenses. It’s possible that receipts could be lost, requiring sub-standard expense reporting. It’s simply not acceptable to do both of those things. If the filing is late, there’s time to get the paperwork in order. Requests for reimbursement that are both late and incomplete should simply be denied.
• Council members should direct the City Manager to respond in detail in advance to newspaper articles that are likely to raise controversies like this. It’s inexplicable that Small-Toney would not respond to some of the questions Conn raised repeatedly before the article went to print. The after-the-fact responses in today’s article seem really incomplete to me, but they would have provided a little bit more context if they had been reported on Sunday. This is not the reporter’s fault; it is the city’s. Choosing not to respond in advance to potential controversies calls into question the City Manager’s ability to govern. By extension, it calls into question the mayor and council’s abilities too.
• Ask Small-Toney for immediate reimbursement of the most obvious violations, such as the apparently relatively small sums for meal reimbursements that should have been covered by per diems.

I hope council members don’t just say how mad they are at the upcoming executive session. They need to clearly spell out conditions to respond to this crisis — ones that can set up better processes for the future.