Jim Werme says he believes internal conflicts with other airport personnel led to the city manager's wanting to fire him.
By MOLLY MOORHEAD, Times Staff Writer
Published November 17, 2005
ZEPHYRHILLS - Jim Werme resigned as manager of the city-run airport Wednesday, hours after City Manager Steve Spina threatened to fire him.
Spina said "an accumulation of things" led to his decision.
Airport Authority members, Spina said, have complained that Werme does not provide enough information on items they vote on during meetings. So Spina asked him to turn in the information earlier for him to review.
"I didn't get it for the last meeting, I didn't get it the meeting before, I didn't get it the meeting before that," Spina said.
The authority is scheduled to meet Monday. Werme was supposed to turn in agenda information at the beginning of this week. He didn't, Spina said, then asked to take Wednesday off.
During the summer, Spina said, Werme came to him with an urgent request to buy a new fuel truck. It required a budget adjustment, which Spina requested and the City Council approved.
"It was an emergency," Spina said. "He still hasn't ordered it."
Werme, who has managed the airport for 101/2 years and earned an annual salary of nearly $50,000, said those kinds of things have always been an issue with his performance. He admits allowing details and deadlines to slip through the cracks.
But he said he thinks internal conflicts with other airport staff brought other issues to the surface, which led to his ouster. "The conflict was just what started stirring things up," Werme said.
Problems among airport staff have been brewing for about a year, specifically between Werme and two office employees.
Werme said the three tried to work out their differences themselves but eventually had to involve Spina. When that failed, Spina brought in a professional mediator who drafted a contract outlining Werme's responsibilities.
Among its demands:
prohibits employment by the manager with any business at the airport;
bans acceptance of any gifts from businesses at the airport;
specifies that demeaning comments or threats against staff will not be tolerated;
outlines expectations for keeping the city manager, City Council and Airport Authority informed of all airport business.
Werme said Wednesday he was uncomfortable with the contract and declined to sign it.
"I felt it was one-sided," he said. "It didn't take everybody into consideration. It took one person into consideration, the airport manager, and we were having problems with the whole group."
Before the mediator was brought in, Anne Donaldson, one of the office workers who maintains airport finances and the Web site and handles inventory, filed a grievance against Werme in April. She has worked at the airport for almost five years but plans to leave in January.
In her grievance, she detailed communication problems and humiliating treatment.
"Uncomfortable situations have been created between employees when Mr. Werme has asked other employees about a person's work, such as when he or she left for the day," Donaldson wrote. "Instead of asking the person in question, Mr. Werme has gone behind the employee's back to find out if there was any misbehavior."
In addition, Donaldson questioned the ethics of Werme's conduct.
"Both Mrs. (Trina) Sweet and myself have been put in compromising situations in which we have felt that Mr. Werme was doing something unethical or against city policy and then been asked to do work that involves the situation," she wrote.
Spina said he looked into the allegations but found nothing egregious. In one case, Spina said, Werme bid on a plane with another tenant from the airport but didn't end up buying it. Later, that same tenant was involved in a minor accident with a plane, and Werme pushed to have the city's insurance cover the damage.
"I'd say some of it was questionable," Spina said. "He has to watch what he does."
In 1998, Werme faced charges of corruption - and was cleared by a state panel - that he steered an airport paving contract to a company that paved the airstrip at his home in Trilby. The Florida Commission on Ethics cleared him.
E-mails obtained by the St. Petersburg Times show that as far back as May, Spina was getting fed up with the fighting.
"I continue to be called out to the airport because you will not stop with the petty c--- and retaliations that I have repeatedly asked you to do," he wrote to Werme in a May 3 e-mail.
On Wednesday, Spina said he had hoped the situation would be resolved differently.
"He had to go back in there and make it work if he wanted to. . . . That's what I wanted him to do.'
Patrick Graham, vice chairman of the Airport Authority, said Wednesday he supported Spina's decision.
"The airport is in a transition. It will only grow and only get better," he said. "It's unfortunate any time we lose staff. I feel to move forward that this might be an appropriate change."
For his part, Werme, 43, said he's proud of the growth and success he has overseen during his tenure, citing the establishment of an industrial park, building new hangars and pulling the airport out of debt.
"Everything I've said we could do, we've done - and more," he said. "It's only been positive for everybody that uses the airport."
Molly Moorhead can be reached at 352 521-6521 or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6521. Her e-mail address is moorhead@sptimes.com
