Last June 17, Palm Coast government hired Amanda Rees as director of its utility department, a 166-employee operation whose $71 million rate-based budget is 15 percent larger than the city’s tax-supported general fund. The utility has been ground zero of the city’s challenges with growth, its capacity under strain–and under a state consent order as a result–with costly but necessary improvements ahead. Leadership at the utility had also been an issue. Reese was to address all that.
Five months later, the city fired her. The city had deemed “I was not the right fit for the position, and they were terminating my employment effective immediately,” Rees wrote in a nine-page letter to the mayor and council members dated Nov. 23, nine days after her dismissal.
“As she was still within her probationary period, this decision was based on performance and the determination that she did not meet the expectations required to complete probation,” the city’s chief spokesperson wrote at the time. The Observer on Nov. 18 reported that she’d been fired following complaints that included “yelling at employees, using a demeaning tone and discussing an employee’s performance with that employee’s peers or subordinates.”
Those are not usually outright firing offenses in organizations that apply progressive discipline. But Rees was a probationary employee. The letter informed her she was not eligible for an administrative appeal. Rees took the next step available to her.
The letter is a...
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