News

Highland Beach Election: Candidate profiles

By Steve Plunkett

The city clerk of Peoria, Ill., regrets e-mailing a joke about a “Texas girl” (a Mexican and an Arab drinking in a bar) from her official computer to Highland Beach Town Clerk Beverly Brown.

“I don’t recall the specific incident, but evidently at some point in time I did forward what seemed like a joke, but may have been offensive to some,” Peoria Clerk Mary Haynes told the Peoria Pundit blog. “I regret offending anyone and have taken measures to ask people sending private email to utilize my home email account.”

The joke, in which the Texan shoots her bar companions because her state has “so many illegal aliens,” was one of five “sexually-oriented or defamatory” e-mails Brown received and forwarded on the town’s e-mail system, said since-suspended Town Manager Dale Sugerman.

Sugerman planned to suspend Brown without pay, but town commissioners ordered him to put a reprimand in her personnel file instead. When he said he had to wait until Brown’s appeal of the suspension was heard, commissioners suspended Sugerman, though with pay, until his contract ends June 30. His annual pay is $140,000, plus a vehicle allowance.

 Two weeks later they sent a registered letter telling Sugerman they would not extend his contract. The next week they sent Sugerman his annual evaluation, as required by the current contract.

At its March 1 meeting, commissioners voted not to give Sugerman a merit raise.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, residents took turns either blasting the commission for poor management, or thanking them for making the correct and difficult decision regarding Sugarman and Brown.

Other jokes in the case against Brown include one alluding to President Obama and using the N-word and one that praises Canadians for not being politically correct atop a collection of non-PC billboards. The Canadian joke was forwarded by Fran Garfunkel, a paralegal in Town Attorney Tom Sliney’s office who Brown said handles Highland Beach matters.

Sliney and Mayor Jim Newill, whose wife has been accompanying Brown to breast cancer treatments, interviewed four candidates for interim town manager and recommended Kathleen Dailey Weiser, who was town manager of Ocean Ridge for two years. 

 ‘’I talked to Mayor Ken Kaleel of Ocean Ridge and he had nothing but flowery things to say about her,’’ Newill said. ‘’She had a problem with one commissioner and just decided to move on.’’

Weiser, who Newill called ‘’the perfect fit’’ for Highland Beach, later was assistant city manager of Oakland Park in Broward County and of Punta Gorda on Florida’s Gulf coast until that position was cut from the budget in 2009.

Weiser was suspended for three days after she showed a friend some e-mails from Punta Gorda’s mayor regarding a dispute the mayor had with a neighbor, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. The next day she learned her job was being eliminated, the paper said.

In Illinois, the Peoria city attorney said it was against city policy to send e-mail messages with “illegal, offensive or disruptive” messages, the Peoria Pundit reported. 

The blog also said the “illegal alien” joke sounded similar to one that caused New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez to discipline a prosecutor last summer while Martinez was a district attorney running for her state’s top job.

Martinez called the joke “deeply offensive” and said the prosecutor’s actions “were inappropriate and in violation of my office’s policy,’’ the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. 

In Brown’s case, Sugerman wrote that Sliney told him the police chief of Wilton Manors in Broward County was suspended for 30 days without pay for sending derogatory and racist e-mails during work hours from his city computer. 

Sugerman said Brown’s actions were serious enough to warrant termination but because she had health problems he had decided on the unpaid suspension. He also arranged for Brown to take college classes at town expense on sexual harassment, cultural sensitivity and computer etiquette.

Highland Beach commissioners have not yet selected an independent hearing officer to decide Brown’s appeal.

Brown is still working.

Newill said they can decide later whether to look for a permanent town manager or promote Weiser to the position.

 Highland Beach hired Brown in 2007. Sugerman became
town manager in 2005.          Ú