City leaders also voted Tuesday evening to consider for approval hiring an external third party to do an investigation of employee complaints.
MITCHELLVILLE, Iowa —
A city council vote to place Mitchellville’s city administrator on paid administrative leave was tabled during a special meeting Tuesday evening, following a discussion between city council members and the employee in question.
Gary Brown has been Mitchellville’s city administrator since March. He was one of three employees — though their names were not written down — on the city’s agenda as an item “to evaluate the professional competency of an employee.”
“The employee was asked if they wanted this opened or closed and requested it to be opened,” said Mayor Jessica Trobaugh as Brown’s portion of the agenda began.
KCCI asked Brown why he chose to allow his portion of the agenda to be done in an open session.
“I’ve received a lot of attacks — even some threats from an employee — in their personal friend group,” said Brown. “I feel like transparency is integrity.”
Brown also tells KCCI he believes those texts are why some are trying to put him on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.
“I feel it is retaliation because I brought forth the threats that were sent in texts messages to another employee, and then I received them,” said Brown.
Trobaugh and some city council members declined to comment Tuesday when approached by KCCI.
Brown says the meeting stems from city issues that he looked into when he took on the role. He says the issues were presented to him by a city council member. He says after looking into them, he presented them to the mayor.
“There are some timesheet issues — accountability for time — and some payroll issues,” said Brown, who did not share the name of the employee(s) involved.
Last week, the city council voted to bring in the State Auditor’s Office.
During the meeting, Trobaugh explained what led up to the agenda item related to Brown.
“We have — as a city — received multiple complaints by employees in regards to the city administrator,” said Trobaugh. “To ensure that all of our employees are treated fairly, with respect, and have their voices heard, it is both my and our city attorney’s recommendation that we place the city administrator on paid administrative leave pending an investigation by a third-party investigation company.”
The discussion following this included Brown saying he knew of one complaint, but not the two that the mayor later shared were made late last week and early this week. Some other city council members echoed Brown.
“I didn’t even know that there were two others accusations at this point,” said Amber Turner, a city council member.
Brown also inquired about if the entire city council was given these complaints and the information surrounding them.
“I provided it to our city attorney and asked whom it should be sent to,” said Trobaugh. “The city attorney said in order for it to be completely — to abide by the wishes of the employees and what they stated in their complaints — that we should not provide that to anyone else because it is HR related.”
“I feel like the city council to make a decision on the whether to put the administrative leave on my position to know on what grounds,” replied Brown, after asking for clarification on who “we” included.
A motion to table the discussion was made, but not supported by all city council members.
“I think you’re making a mistake,” said Bill Roberts, a member of the city council, as he was addressing another member. “We had the opportunity to fix this two months and you did nothing. You did nothing. Now, you’ve made it worse by waiting two months and that was before all of these other allegations even arose.”
“Our city administrator also brought issues to us that we chose to not address at that time, which everybody here is council,” said Turner. “I don’t feel comfortable based on the discussion I had with our city attorney, who told me about the possibility of doing an investigation by third party. At that time — a little over a week ago — she didn’t say anything about placing anybody on administrative leave.”
A 3-2 vote tabled the discussion for a later date, when more information is available. The meeting then went into a closed session about a different employee.
In total, the special meeting lasted just under 30 minutes. At the end, city council members voted to consider the approval of hiring a third party to conduct an investigation on the complaints.
In the meantime, Brown has one hope for the future.
“I want for us to get back on track and focus on things that we can put back into our community here,” said Brown.