Town Commission - Regular Meeting

24th, 11-12, calling today's meeting into order. Madam Clerk, if you'll take the roll, please.

Mayor Danziger?

Present.

Vice Mayor Benmergi? Present. Commissioner Travani? Absent. Commissioner Vildostegui? Absent. Commissioner Weingart?

Present.

Mayor, you have a quorum.

Chief, if you'll lead us, please, in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you, all right moving on to a selection of executive recruiting firm Madam clerk if you read the title of the resolution into the record, please

Item 2A, selection of executive recruitment form, a resolution of the town commission of the town of Surfside, Florida, selecting and approving the engagement of blank for executive recruitment services, authorizing the town manager to negotiate and execute an agreement with the firm for the services, providing for authorization, implementation, and an effective date.

Thank you. Um, I guess before we go in, we have a couple of comments, public comments. Mr Christmas, three minutes, please.

George Christmas, 92 25 Collins Avenue. Um, I don't know if it's still on the agenda in this manner, but last time I heard that there was the idea of a, a COO as well. I don't see that being as necessary, kind of confuses the search. I mean, go for the town manager. If at some point the idea is that the town is big enough and that sure, it's big enough that there needs to be an assistant town manager. You decide to do that and really that person gets hired by the town manager you hired. You know, we've had an assistant town manager in the past at times, but that's the path I would go, not kind of this interim COO to bridge the gap between now and three months from now when we get the real town manager. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Mayeshada.

Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioner. Just a quick question. I just wanted to know what the difference is between using our current HR director versus going outside and hiring a recruiter. I thought that was part of her job. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So I'll just quickly address, George, your question, COO. The offer that was on the table before was really just kind of like bringing in a firm to do that operation. Obviously we cannot sit up here and hire a COO. It's not within the charter. And I think we wanted to move from that. So hopefully a new manager will be able to bring that piece in. Obviously, we still have our eyes open on that kind of thing, but at the end of the day, we're not the ones that can hire someone full-time, and I think we wanted to move away from this very expensive and not permanent position that we, I mean, we could hire a firm to assist, but we wanted to move from that. As far as HR director, I don't know. I just think it's quicker, more efficient. It has a larger outreach since they are within a network of managers. We can get a lot more, so we'll see what happens. All right, Mr. Attorney, turning over to you.

I don't want to get yelled at anymore. Finally trained me. Okay, so you all know the history of how we sort of got here over the past several weeks. there and you're at a stage where you're selecting, hopefully today because things do need to move forward, a executive search firm to go out for and vet and bring forward a permanent town manager. There are two firms that previously were here that have submitted a revised proposal for just that scope of work. There was one firm that was invited to participate the first round, chose not to because they didn't provide the interim services that we were looking for. but when contacted, they were quite interested in this limited scope, and as of 5.30 this morning, so you're getting as almost quickly as I have, There is a proposal, although it's in the form of an email and representative clients, from one of the three people that we originally reached out to, which is Renee Narlock and Associates. So you have, although you have not met anybody from Renee Narlock and Associates, and you have met these other two groups, you have technically three firms proposing to provide that service for you. So they range, just so we can cut right to the financial part of this. They range from NARLOC, which is Go ahead. I'm sorry. Okay. They range from Narlock, who has a fee that could go as high as $39,000, depending on the extent of cost in addition to the actual fee. You have... That's the highest. The mid is Colin Basinger and Associates at 36,500. So there's about a $3,000 difference there. And then you have SGR, That page I folded someplace.

26,919 not to exceed 2,500 expense, 29,419.

Okay, so you have between 29 and 39 and the mid one is about 36 in total. So that's the range from a cost stamp. Each one of them has a staggered payment. they take their fees in steps. Once they get retained, there's a certain amount. Once they put out on the street a brochure and begin the recruitment process, there's another, and then there's a final payment that's due upon the signing of a contract with the employee. And they all stagger that a little bit differently. But at the end of the day, those fees come out to anywhere between 29 on the low side from SGR to 39 on the high side from NARLOC. You know, there's no science to this. You all have to just kind of come to a decision of who you think is going to perform the job the best. They've all indicated that they're prepared to expedite this. they all have indicated that they have potentially resumes to even start moving forward before the formal search process begins, so that if there are applicants, if you will, or they feel like there's somebody out there, Narlock mentioned last night that she thinks there may be two people immediately available, but that doesn't mean you should pick her because of that, but they all have agreed that they will start feeding interesting resumes to you even before the full process is complete so that at least you know what's happening. If there's somebody who you see in particular that you want to expedite through the process, you can tell them to do that, do the vetting, and bring somebody forward. So there's nothing... They have a formal process they follow, but all of them have agreed to abbreviate that process, understanding the needs that you all have. So that's where you are. It's not that difficult a decision. You just need to decide which person you think is gonna be the most effective and responsive to you. All right. Let me take a few minutes. There is before you this, two of the firms have put forward a rather lengthy proposal. If you want any more in depth on NARLOC, you can go to your computer to Renee NARLOC and Associates.

So what I'm seeing from, just for clarification, from Benzinger is it's $36,500 is their fee, as opposed to the others that have, like, here's the starting fee plus expenses for advertising. I think he had... Yeah, $36,500 is their standard fee. I don't see anything if there's additional, obviously if we choose the ICO, they give us a better price.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a different thing. That's different. I thought he had...

I don't know if there's any...

Thank you.

Is there an additional charge for advertising? Like the others have basically, you've got SGR at $26,919.

No, I asked them for an all-in fee. You recall that at one point they even included like housing and this and that.

So no, it... Okay, town front payment of $12,000.

$12,000 deducted from the final invoice should be one year, which is not an intent price increase, $36,000 for standalone search.

The reason why I'm bringing this up is because if you're trying to organize as far as cost, the other two...

Hang on, there is a note here that says the town will also be required to pay the cost associated with bringing the finalist and spouses if invited to interviews... So if you have an out of town person there, you're gonna be charged to bring that person in. So that seems to be the only additional cost required to pay costs associated with bringing the finalist here, travel, meals, hotel, whatever. So there could be an additional cost there.

Nothing about advertising in here?

He says a flat fee for the standalone search. Doesn't talk about breaking out advertising or anything else.

All right. Take it away, guys.

The meeting may not continue because we have no quorum.

On my review, I see CBNA $36,500 standalone, SGR $26,919, $1,000 discounted if we're using their interim as well. And then for NARLC, we didn't have the opportunity to meet, it's more of an informal quote, $32,500. So SGR is obviously the lowest on a fixed price here. From presentations, I was impressed by their presentation.

I like their energy.

I like their approach. I like that they have a good amount of other services that we may be able to benefit from. So that definitely stood out. From the expense side on SGR, they have up to $2,500 included for the ads, everything else. And it would only be billed at cost, so it's not a fixed cost. So our total not to exceed with SGR is 29,419. They also offer free research. The candidate leaves within 12 months. We have that with CBNA as well. I don't know if that comes along with NARLOC. SGR is also offering a complimentary leadership workshop. They value at 4,750. I think any education support we could provide is of value.

Just so there aren't any surprises because I'm reading SGR, they do have a page here, page 54, where they do list additional charges depending on amount of questionnaires, There's additional charges here. That's their base fee. It looks like that you could end up, I don't see that it looks particularly excessive. A stakeholder survey is the only thing. If you wanted to do a, some communities actually go out and survey the community as to who they'd like to see in a manager. So that's $1,500 if you want to do that. additional questionnaires above the 15 that they put out, 230 per candidate. I don't see any of these, even if you did everything except the 1,500, it doesn't look like all of those would be more than 1,500 bucks. So just so you're aware, that second page does have some supplemental service, other expenses not included in the fixed fee.

Yeah, the day that they came to the presentation, I also liked their energy, and I actually did a little bit of research about Doc Thomas and Wendell, yeah, you know.

He's probably gonna be our leader.

Yeah, I mean, and all I read, you know, I don't know them, but I liked the presentation, but all I read, all the information I was able to research was, a lot of experience and good reviews. And price-wise, it's honestly the lowest, so we can save a few bucks. I don't know.

All right, sounds like we're ready for a motion.

Second?

No, we need the actual motion. Let's make a motion to vote. Okay, so the motion would be to approve the resolution that's before you and including the firm of, did I get it correct?

SGR.

Let's make a motion to approve this resolution, to approve this.

Strategic Government Resources.

Yeah, to approve the SGR. Let's call the roll. I need a second.

Second.

I second.

Mayor, may I call the roll? Calling the roll. Commissioner Trevelyan is absent. Commissioner Villestegui is absent. Commissioner Weingart?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Van Merge? Yes. Mayor Danziger? Yes. Mayor, the motion carries.

Thank you. Okay. Motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

All opposed?

Okay. Okay, so I'm going to contact these firms, begin to ask.