Educating Recor

The commission approved city manager Recor's travel request for $6,000 to attend a two week seminar in Charlottesville, VA on the consent agenda February 6, 2012. The Commission should have aired his request, as well as Perona's, but did nothing but silently approve it.

Our view

No justifying Recor trip

■ Commissioners should not have OK’d city manager’s management course

An argument could be made to justify the expenditure of $2,500 in taxpayer money to send Fort Pierce Commissioner Tom Perona to the four-day American Public Power Association conference in Seattle in June.

Perona is the Fort Pierce Commission’s liaison with Florida Municipal Power Agency, the city’s electric utility provider. He previously attended association conferences as a board member of the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority.

Perona said sharing ideas with policy makers and utility professionals from across the nation at the conference will give the city “a perspective outside ourown littlefishbowl andkeepsus in linewith the latest utility trends, systems and solutions.”

Information obtained by the city commissioner could be of assistance to his fellow commissioners as they deal with utility system issues.

The $2,500 authorized for the trip by his fellow commissioners includes registration, airfare, hotel, mileage, parking and meals. Perona said he plans to pay 25 percent of the total cost.

Still, Seattle is a pretty long distance to travel to get whatever information is obtained.

Meanwhile, the approval by the Fort Pierce Commission to spend $6,000 to send City Manager David Recor to a two-week management course at the University of Virginia in July can in no way be justified.

And, that may not be the only cost to the taxpayers. The $6,000 to attend the Senior Executive Institute at the Darden School of Business includes registration, lodging, weekday meals and instruction material. It does not cover travel or weekend meals. Recor said he plans to pay for those items through his departmental travel and education budget, which does not require approval from commissioners. His total travel and education budget is $8,000.

Recor justified his attendance at the conference saying, “As the (city) continues to provide quality services with fewer and fewer resources, I hope to return with new tools and ideas to help craft a healthy, flexible, continuously improving, learning government organization and to be prepared to interact effectively and collaborate with our citizenry.”

It’s not just the cost of the course that’s galling, it’s the timing.

Recor has made no secret of his desire to leave the city manager’s position. Even now he’s being considered for a similar job inBoyntonBeach. And it was just a few months ago that Recor survived on a 3-2 vote a proposal to terminate his employment with the city of Fort Pierce.

Attending the management course in Virginia may look good on Recor’s resume, but would seem to do very little for the taxpayers footing the bill, especially if he leaves the city.

The public and city commissioners should demand that Recor reimburse the city for his trip to Virginia if he leaves city employment within two years. Otherwise, the money has been wasted.

And the fact that commissioners approved Recor’s application and expenses for the course indicates a lack of sensitivity to public opinion about the frugal use of taxpayer money, especially at a time the city (and its manager) is pleading poverty over declining property tax revenues.