Maitland takes final step to fire city manager

The Maitland City Council took its final step to fire City Manager Jim Williams on Monday.

The Council voted unanimously to terminate Williams’ employment at its April 25 meeting.

Talks of terminating Williams started last month, after Mayor Dale McDonald and Councilwoman Bev Reponen filed critical employment reviews for Williams’ performance in 2015.

“He's a stand up guy... he's everything you would ask him to be; he's just not the right guy to be city manager here anymore,” McDonald said at the Council's March 14 meeting. “…I'm of the opinion that we need a new city manager here.”

On March 28, the Council unanimously voted to suspend Williams with pay, and two weeks later passed a preliminary resolution to fire him. On Monday they made that resolution final with a 5-0 vote.

Williams had served as Maitland’s city manager since 2008. Before that, he worked for the city of Winter Park for more than three decades, 13 of those years as city manager.

Per Williams’ contract with the city, Maitland will owe him a total of $238,324 in severance and benefits for canceling his employment.

Maitland’s Assistant City Manager Sharon Anselmo is serving as the city’s acting city manager until someone is hired to officially take the helm. Anselmo said the city has no set hiring process to select a new city manager. The city also doesn’t have a set job description for the position, so Anselmo said she is compiling the job descriptions of neighboring communities’ city managers to create one for Maitland.

McDonald said he is confident that the city will find the right man or woman for the job.

“There will be people who want to work here,” he said