After 10 years Avondale Estates City Manager Clai Brown left city hall for good at 5 p.m. Wednesday. About 90 minutes later, with Brown’s seat conspicuously empty, commissioners unanimously approved 5-0 his separation agreement.
In between was a lot of the typical disorderliness of an Avondale meeting with commissioners and audience members—about 70 showed up—bantering back and forth for 45 minutes. At several points an audience member shouted to commissioners, “Why don’t you all resign?”
There have been hints for months that some commissioners have interfered in the city’s day-to-day business, including giving work assignments to staff. Brown practically said as much in a brief and elliptical public statement—his only public statement—on Dec. 11. The one public example of this intervention is Commissioner Brian Fisher’s revising the budget and subsequently leading budget discussions in work sessions on Nov. 28 and Dec. 18.
During an interview with the AJC Wednesday before the meeting, Mayor Jonathan Elmore emphatically denied any wrongdoing and defended Fisher.
“[Commissioners] have never crossed into [city business],” he said. “We’re an ambitious board, we want to get things done, but we are 100 percent transparent. And Brian had every right to ask questions about the budget when it wasn’t balanced, and Clai and [Financial Director Ken Turner] had no problem with that.
“Fact is,” he said, “I don’t know why Clai resigned. You’ll have to ask him.”
Brown has declined numerous requests for on-the-record interviews since he initially resigned on Dec. 6.
Brown will receive a severance of $44,787.60 and he will also be available as a consultant for hiring a new city manager through June 30. His consulting payment is $6,500 per month and he will get paid approximately $32,000 for unused vacation and sick days. Counting his last two weeks (through Feb. 28) of city manager pay, this comes to a total of roughly $109,691.60. His initial severance would’ve paid him $317,408.57 over 12 months, but that agreement became obsolete with the new separation package.
Also on Wednesday Turner was unanimously approved as interim city manager. Turner has been Finance Director for 10 years. In December he was awarded a “Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting” by the Government Finance Officers Association of the U.S and Canada.
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