The Leelanau County Board of Commissioners recommended Interim Planning Director Gail Myer for promotion to planning director at their executive session Tuesday.
Myer has big shoes to fill as her predecessor, Trudy Galla, had served the county for 35 years when she announced her retirement in November.
But any chances for the commissioners to discuss the future of the county’s planning and community development department under were undermined when Commissioner Melinda Lautner proposed an amendment to the motion to promote Interim Finance Director Cathy Hartesvelt to finance director as well.
When the call to second the motion came, the commissioners sat in stunned silence for a moment before Commissioner Jamie Kramer seconded her “for the purpose of discussion.” As Board Chairman Ty Wessell noted, “this is not normally the way that we’ve done business” — typically, an appointment like this would be a separate agenda item.
Having been seconded, Commissioner Lautner then said: “Cathy has been acting as financial director interim longer than Gail has been acting as interim director for planning. She has worked very hard. She has brought all of us right up to audit standards again. She has the history — it’s very important. She’s working very, very hard and she comes highly recommended. And I see absolutely no reason whatsoever that we wouldn’t appoint her today.”
It is true that Hartesvelt has served as interim finance director longer than Myer has been interim planning director. In fact, Hartesvelt has been finance department head longer than anyone else since it was established in January 2022, always in an interim capacity.
However, several commissioners questioned how a promotion of this nature would fit into their long-term plans to hire a new county administrator/ chief financial officer (CFO) to replace Deb Allen.
As Commissioner Doug Rexroat noted, the county board had just agreed on Feb. 8 to move forward with seeking a new “county administrator/ CFO with a finance department that reports directly to that position.” This new position is supposed to be held by someone with a “deep” financial background and be the only one reporting to the county board on finances.
When asked for clarification by the newspaper, Wessell said that the board is “committed to hire an administrator that has strong leadership skills, a strong background in finance and (is) able to manage construction and long-term planning projects,” but they will still “need a finance department supervisor to head the day-today work in the finance office.”
If approved, Hartesvelt would serve in the latter role and report to the new administrator/ CFO. However, Wessell stated that he was not comfortable with considering this sort of promotion for Hartesvelt until after the board hires an administrator/ CFO, because he wants the new administrator “to have input in the finance structure and senior staff” for this department.
Yet, the board seemed split on the matter.
Commissioner Gwenne Allgaier said that she would support Hartesvelt’s promotion but felt that adding this to a separate item would be doing her a “disservice.” Kramer later agreed there was “literally no reason” that Hartesvelt has not been promoted to finance director yet.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Doug Rexroat resisted the amendment, but for procedural reasons rather than the merits of Hartesvelt as director. He suggested that Lautner withdraw her amendment and instead motion that the board consider promoting Hartesvelt at their March executive session.
Lautner complied, and the motion to discuss promoting Hartesvelt to finance director in March was approved unanimously. “The fact that I saw (Myer) on here and not both (Myer and Hartesvelt) was just unbelievable to me,” Lautner concluded. “This is, dare I say it, discrimination, and it’s alarming.”
During the meeting, Wessell compared Lautner’s initial motion to the previous board’s decision to strip finance responsibilities from the clerk’s office as a late addition to its May 2021 addition, because of the perceived lack of planning in both. Commissioner Kama Ross agreed with Wessell’s assessment.
Later in the meeting, the county board voted 6-1 to recommend hiring former county administrator Chet Janik of the Michigan Leadership Institute to assist in the search for the new administrator/CFO. Ross was the sole “no” vote, saying that she was concerned that the board does not seem to have explored other consultants besides Janik.
The decisions to promote Myer and hire Janik are pending consideration of the full board at their regular meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m.
