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Port Richey Names Interim City Manager

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SUNCOAST NEWS STAFF REPORT

Published: December 23, 2008

PORT RICHEY - At a special meeting Monday night, the City Council named Assistant City Manager Ellen Posivach to step in as interim city manager. Last week council members voted not to renew the contract of City Manager Richard Reade, which expires Dec. 25.

The vote to install Posivach as interim city manager went along the exact same 3-2 split as the vote a week earlier to discontinue Reade's services. Mayor Mark Hashim and Councilman Perry Bean were in the minority in both instances.

Prior to Monday's vote, however, Hashim and Bean joined Mayor Richard Rober and councilmen Phil Abts and Steven O'Neill in expressing unanimous faith in Posivach, who spent the previous nine years as city manager in Tarpon Springs.

Hashim went so far as to request that it be added to the record of the meeting his no vote on naming Posivach interim manager was merely a continuation of his objection to the procedure of the previous week's meeting.

Most of the discussion leading up to the vote on Monday had to do with the whether the Dec. 15 vote not to retain Reade's services was valid. In prepared statements, Hashim and Bean laid out their contention that council proceeded improperly at that meeting and therefore it was questionable whether Reade was still legally employed by the city.

They referred to Article III, Section 3.04, of the city charter. It stipulates the removal of a city manager requires a four-fifths "supermajority" vote. Since the vote Dec. 15 was 3-2, they contended, it didn't meet that standard and therefore Reade's contract was still in place.

To now try and replace him, they contended, would be to completely disregard the charter.

Read more about Monday's meeting in Saturday's edition of The Suncoast News.

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