B

The City of Tullahoma now has a new City Administrator; the same person that was until June 30, 2023, the principal of THS, Mr. Jason Quick.

Mr. Quick submitted his application to the city for the City Administrator’s position in April of 2023 per the date on his cover letter.  His attached resume states that he is the principal at THS (from 2020 to present).  His application, along with the applications of all applicants, was graded by a Citizen’s Committee chosen for the purpose of rating all 38 applicants.  Mr. Quick had 18 applicants that rated higher than him in the Citizen’s Committee’s rating system.  The Citizen’s Committee gave that rating list to BOMA listing the top 7 for consideration on July 11^th, 11 days after Mr. Quick became no longer employed by TCS as principal of THS, a job Mr. Quick stated on Facebook that he wanted to hold until his retirement. Mr. Quick did not re-submit his resume after his employment change (why would he since he didn’t make the Citizen’s Committee’s recommendation list), updating that he was no longer the principal at THS, or stating a reason why he left the position, which would have been a question asked by any prudent employer of an applicant.  And if you don’t want to have to answer that question, just let it slide that there is a change in employment.  OK, sometimes things don’t work out as planned (or hoped for), but maybe they actually do work out in other ways.

Please tell me (in better detail than Alderman Amacher tried to do in her carefully worded yet condescending admonishment of my statement to the board) why the BOMA overrode the Citizen’s Committee’s recommendation by 18 individuals, raising Mr. Quick’s application to the top 4 of all applicants (bypassing 14 other people); why at that point the 2^nd highest rated individual (who was well qualified for the position) withdrew his application (maybe he could read the cards being held); why the BOMA would want to hire someone without any city administration experience as the CEO of our great city (paying him a large salary for his non-experience), and why almost everyone on the BOMA was so much in a hurry to have Mr. Quick start the next day after Monday’s meeting (Mr. Quick half-jokingly asking HR staff right then and there if they had a pen so he could go ahead and sign his paperwork)?  BTW, it was never publicly stated at the board meeting how much money they offered Mr. Quick in salary (quietly deferring to HR’s recommendation and never stating it out loud – were they ashamed to say?), but you can always ask the city HR folks if you want to know – it’s public information.

A CEO of anything should not be hired having no experience at that job.  Ms. Amacher suggested I get to know Mr. Quick and I would come to “like” him as much as they do.  I don’t need to like the City Administrator, but I do need to respect that person for the knowledge and experience they bring to the job.  Maybe 40 years ago it would have been different, but in this day and age, with the complexity of knowledge needed to run a city, the City Administrator is no position for on-the-job training.  If Mr. Quick is that good at administration services as Ms. Amacher stated, why isn’t he still at his dream job as principal of THS?  Maybe if Mr. Quick really cared about Tullahoma, he would realize that and refuse the position (too late).  I may have heard wrong, but I was told that the city charter does not officially have a City Administrator’s position, so it probably doesn’t matter if we have one or not since, as we all understand by now, a majority of the BOMA wants to have the last word on everything anyway; save the money for extra Christmas decorations or something else more serious.

At the special board meeting on Monday, the BOMA even debated (albeit, half-heartedly) whether Mr. Quick would even be made an offer of a contract once his 90-day probationary period expired (I’m assuming the majority on the board who voted him in would not want at the end of that 90 days to acknowledge they made a mistake and fire him).  So, yes, why offer him a contract that he can be held accountable to; better to have him just do what the BOMA wants and follow orders:  might as well, he has no experience in the job and would not be able to advise them on legal or professional directions anyway (no offense, Mr. Worsham).  The BOMA must want it that way since their last administrator was well qualified and in the course of performing her job did have to tell the BOMA what they could and could not do, and, as we all know so well, that didn’t sit right with many folks on the BOMA; BOMA lesson learned:  toe the line or else, my way or the highway, we control things, to heck with your advice.

It is my perception, right or wrong (and is also the perception of other citizens I have spoken to), that the fix was in for Mr. Quick.  Without more than circumstantial evidence (all the above applicant information and process findings are on paper, though), I perceive and think it is reasonable to perceive that Mr. Quick and others knew he would get the position regardless of process proceedings.  Regardless, he is now the new City Administrator – the CEO of the City of Tullahoma.  Maybe he can last longer in this job than he did in his last one.  And maybe, he could even eventually move to Tullahoma, instead of living in Winchester, and become a citizen of Tullahoma, living with the folks in the town he states he loves so much.  I’ll be glad to meet with him at any time for the betterment of Tullahoma.

Is this really how the citizens of Tullahoma want their city’s functioning to be perceived, here and throughout the rest of the state?  Must be, the citizens of Tullahoma voted the people into office that pulled this fast one over the eyes of those same citizens.  And so it goes.