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Supporters try to save community director's job

Several defend the Pinellas Park employee at a hearing to discuss whether he'll be fired.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published January 16, 2005

PINELLAS PARK - The former fire chief blasted the city administration Thursday, saying the management style was a "cancer" that stifled employee creativity and lowered morale.

Ken Cramer charged that older employees are threatened and intimidated until they leave the city in frustration. Employees who do not cave in, Cramer said, are subject to a character assassination of "innuendoes, half truths and outright lies."

Cramer made his remarks during a hearing to decide whether Community Development Director Bud Wortendyke should be fired. Cramer spoke in Wortendyke's defense.

"I am requesting that Mr. Wortendyke be restored to his position and these scurrilous allegations be removed from his personnel file and that City Council take a long, hard look at the manner in which the city is being managed, or mismanaged, as the case may be," Cramer said.

The nine other people who had come to plead for Wortendyke burst into applause when Cramer finished.

Cramer was not alone in denouncing the city administration. Two others said City Manager Mike Gustafson and Assistant City Manager Tom Shevlin should go. Shevlin is Wortendyke's superior and asked that the community development director be terminated.

"It is my belief that if Bud is to go, then the city manager and the assistant city manager should be going with him," city activist Marshall Cook wrote in an e-mail.

Cook could not be at the hearing.

Randy Heine, a candidate for Pinellas Park mayor in 2006, agreed the two should go.

"From what I hear, Mr. Shevlin was coerced into signing a letter," Heine said. "I think things should be reversed here. This man (Shevlin) should be in that man's (Wortendyke) seat, and we should be terminating him."

Wortendyke has worked for the city since December 1997. In that time, he has annexed about 1,000 acres that has brought about $2.5-million in annual revenue to Pinellas Park. During much of his tenure, council members praised Wortendyke's skill and performance.

But in December, rumors surfaced that Wortendyke was in trouble. Then, on Jan. 3, Shevlin gave him a job evaluation that ranked him as "below expectations," the next lowest on the Pinellas Park performance scale. Shevlin said Wortendyke needed to go.

"I no longer have trust or confidence" in him, Shevlin said Thursday.

Shevlin suspended Wortendyke without pay pending a final outcome of the hearing.

Wortendyke, 60, responded that the charges of mismanagement and mistakes were trumped up in an effort to fire him because of his age.

One of his attorneys, Henry Stein, echoed that opinion: "I believe these charges are a pretext for a violation of the Florida Civil Rights Act. I believe that Bud is being discriminated against on the basis of age."

He warned that the city is courting a lawsuit with possible damages.

Otherwise, he and Wortendyke had little to say. Stein said Wortendyke will submit a written, point-by-point refutation of the charges by 5 p.m. Thursday. Gustafson will make a final decision on Wortendyke's future after that.

Although Wortendyke chose to hold off his defense for a week, others spoke in his favor. His defenders came from the cream of Pinellas Park - two city ambassadors, developers, business owners and longtime residents.

[Last modified January 16, 2005, 00:33:22]