By Steve Plunkett
Gulf Stream is getting its first-ever assistant town manager and a public works director come Oct. 1 amid other high-level moves in Town Hall.
Assistant Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro will be promoted to assistant town manager/legal, and water maintenance supervisor Anthony Beltran will be public works director.
In a shuffle of duties in the town clerk’s office, Rita Taylor will get a new title — senior town clerk. Her deputy clerk, Renee Basel, will become town clerk and Rebecca Tew, the town’s chief financial officer, will handle more of the building permit work previously done by Taylor.
Town Manager Greg Dunham made the recommendations on Aug. 12 and said the changes, which town commissioners will approve during budget hearings in September, will add a cumulative $47,000 in salary expenses.
“We’re happy with all the staff recommendations and titles. Everyone’s doing well so we’ll keep moving forward,” Vice Mayor Tom Stanley said.
Nazzaro, who helped write the town’s public records procedures as a paralegal, was named its full-time staff attorney in 2016 and assistant town attorney in 2019.
“I think someday, I think he has visions of going into city management,” Dunham said, calling Nazzaro his “right-hand man.”
Basel came to Gulf Stream as a temporary worker in 2015 and was given a permanent position as executive assistant soon after. She became assistant town clerk in 2019 and deputy clerk after earning her designation last year as a certified municipal clerk. She is also the Southeast district director of the Florida Association of City Clerks.
Taylor, who has been the town clerk for 32 years, “will always have a place on our staff as she continues working in our clerk’s office and also providing historical perspective, knowledge and advice to our staff and to the residents of Gulf Stream,” Dunham said.
Commissioners early last year named the one-room library inside Town Hall the “Rita L. Taylor Gulf Stream Library” in a show of gratitude for her years of service.
Before taking her job in Gulf Stream, Taylor served 20 years as clerk in Ocean Ridge. And from the early 1970s to the late 2000s, she was an alderwoman and volunteer clerk in Briny Breezes, where she owns a second home.
In other personnel moves, Dunham proposed hiring a new police officer and an accounting clerk.
He also recommended giving town employees a $200-a-month “fuel allowance” to offset inflation pressure, along with a 5% cost-of-living raise.
In other business, commissioners:
• Agreed to pay consulting engineers Baxter & Woodman $64,000 for construction management services for civil work to be done at Bluewater Cove. The nine-month project will include water, wastewater, drainage and paving work at the new subdivision north of Place Au Soleil.
• Were told the town will pay police officers on night duty a shift differential above the pay given daytime patrols.
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