By Katie Northcott, News Director
Update: The City of Tullahoma provided Peterson Media Group with the three memos mentioned in the story. You can find those memos attached below the story. The memos describe meetings between Mayor Lynn Sebourn, City Administrator Jason Quick, and City Attorney Stephen Worsham as well as executive sessions of the Tullahoma Board of Mayor and Aldermen.
It appears that the tension between Quick and Sebourn stems from a discussion of Quick’s performance that took place in September. It appears there is additional tension because Quick believes that BOMA is undermining his authority and violating his contract by outsourcing some HR services.
At the Tullahoma Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BOMA) meeting on Monday, Oct. 27, Tullahoma Mayor Lynn Sebourn called an executive session to discuss an email from City Administrator Jason Quick that indicated he was considering filing litigation against the city.
Sebourn scheduled the executive session for Monday, Nov. 3. The meeting is closed to the public. Alderman Matthew Bird made a motion to bar Quick from the discussion of the possible litigation on Nov. 3. The motion failed in a 2-4 vote (Sebourn and Bird in favor).
At the Oct. 27 meeting, Quick referenced three memorandums that he emailed to BOMA and the city attorneys. He said one of the emails pertains to violations to his contract with the city. He said the other two emails express that the mayor has created an environment of “hostility, intimidation, and threats” toward Quick.
“I just don’t think that the things that are occurring behind the scenes are correct and accurate, and I think the city of Tullahoma should know that,” Quick said.
Quick said his biggest concern is not the contract violations, but that city employees feel unsafe. He believes BOMA’s decision to explore outsourcing some Human Resources (HR) services and some Information Technology (IT) services has made employees feel they are in danger of being fired.
At a special call BOMA meeting on Oct. 2, BOMA voted in favor of authorizing the city attorneys to explore options for outsourcing some HR and IT services. The agenda item No. 25-104 said the outsourced HR services could include “support for performance reviews, employee grievance process, support for updating city personnel policies, and other services as determined by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.”
Agenda item No. 25-105 said the outsourced IT services could include “security audits, system security configuration and other services as determined by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.”
At the Oct. 2 meeting, the Board members all seemed to believe that the outside firms would provide support to existing staff, not replace existing staff. Alderman Busch Thoma said hiring a third-party HR firm would provide protection for BOMA, protection for city employees, and protection for Tullahoma residents should the city face lawsuits in the future.
At the Oct. 27 meeting, the city attorneys presented their findings to BOMA, recommending that BOMA approve up to $20,000 to hire an outside law firm to assist with a performance evaluation of the city administrator and to analyze the City of Tullahoma personnel policy.
Due to Quick’s email about possible litigation, Sebourn suggested that the item be removed from the agenda until the alleged contract violations could be investigated. However, some aldermen wanted to discuss the item even if it didn’t pass.
“Our advice to you all would be to remove it right now because we received potential litigation indication, and so we think there needs to be more discussion about it before it is brought up,” said Brittany Hoskins, representing the city attorney’s office. “There are other avenues for us to discuss that other than right now.”
The motion to remove the item from the agenda failed 3-3 (Aldermen Bobbie Wilson, Jerry Mathis, and Kurt Glick opposed).
In the discussion of the item, Glick, Wilson, and McGee expressed concerns that the city attorneys had acted prematurely in bringing the item before BOMA.
Bird explained that he had a role in the item appearing before BOMA. After the Oct. 2 meeting, he reached out to the city’s insurance provider at the recommendation of Tennessee’s Municipal Technical Advisory Service. The insurance provider recommended a lawyer that had handled a situation similar to Tullahoma’s. The city attorneys used Bird’s research to locate two attorneys that could perform HR services for the city.
“We were going to bring this before you tonight to bring you two options, to say, ‘Hey, here they are. You’ve asked us to find these things. We’ve found them, but it’s up to you all as to who you want to use,’” Hoskins said. “But the information we’ve received is that employment attorneys or HR attorneys are the appropriate people to do this.”
Hoskins said that one of the concerns Quick expressed in his memorandums is that BOMA has not performed a performance evaluation on him during his time working for the city even though his contract stipulated one would be performed yearly. The city attorneys thought it might be appropriate to recommend the law firms they had found as a resource that could perform the evaluation to help address Quick’s concerns.
Glick said that outsourcing Quick’s performance evaluation was a piecemeal approach to outsourcing HR services. He said that BOMA did not need to use taxpayer funds for Quick’s performance evaluation. Mathis agreed, saying in his 14 years on BOMA, performance reviews had never been outsourced.
Sebourn disagreed that the city attorneys had presented a piecemeal approach.
“This item is not just for the city administrator. It is for an analysis of personnel policies,” Sebourn said. “This is one path forward. … Maybe we need to regroup and find another path. We have risk with our policy as it is now in terms of legal terms, and we may wish we had spent that $20,000.”
Ultimately, the motion to hire a firm to assist with Quick’s performance evaluation and analyze city personnel policies failed 2-4 (Sebourn and Bird in favor).
Peterson Media Group submitted an open records request for Quick’s emails and any replies to those emails to the City of Tullahoma on Tuesday, Oct. 28 but has not received the files at the time of this article. Peterson Media Group has also reached out to Quick for a comment but has not received a response at the time of this article.
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