Staff Writer 

What could be the most important part of Deb Smith’s 27-year career as South Portland’s Community Center Operations Manager?

Her final five minutes.

“It was very orchestrated and stoic. [City Manager] Jim Gailey was there and [Assistant City Manager] Erik Carson watched me the whole time,” Smith said. “They told me to ‘Leave right now’ and I said, ‘This is about [Parks, Recreation and Public Works Director] Dana Anderson’s vendetta against me.’”

Smith and former City Councilor David Jacobs, who has been acting as her media contact and advisor, believe Smith – along with four other city employees laid off on the same day – was not provided two weeks notice of termination or time to gather her things so that city officials could delete information on her computer that would have proven suspicions she has about Anderson’s “abuse” of his position.

“I have files. I keep a list of everybody who works for me, I keep notes of situations with other employees,” Smith said.

Gailey said legal counsel advised him not to allow any of the employees time to gather personal belongings.

“The city chose to make the employee layoffs effective immediately and to pay the employees two weeks pay instead of providing them two weeks advance notice,” according to a press release from the city. “The city made that decision based on morale and operational issues: any layoff is difficult for everyone involved, especially since the affected employees were long-time employees of the city.”

Without the legal advice, Gailey said he would have done it differently. 

“It stunk,” he said. “It was completely what I did not want to do. I hated doing it that way, but we all hear of it happening in the private sector for the same reason.”

In the end, it may not matter whether the city was following legal advice or attempting to destroy Smith’s files.

Smith said she has them anyway.

Gailey said the city’s information department had copied 10 gigabytes of information, at Smith’s request, prior to her being laid off. 

“I made sure to take off all my notes about [Anderson],” she said on Tuesday. “The notes I have are just situations that happened, anybody can have any of it.”

When asked to producethe notes, Smith said she “wasn’t sure if [she] should do that.” She said she needed to consult with legal counsel before releasing the information, documents Gailey said could still be considered public record.

“City documents are city documents,” Gailey said. “If she’s holding – if she has the only copy – those are ours.”

Gailey and Smith disagree on more than her notes about Anderson.

Smith said she was terminated with four other city employees, including former Public Works Supervisor Dave Gaudet, who were laid off last week, as a result of a conversation she had with Anderson in December. She said she confronted Anderson on a number of topics concerning his “disappointing” leadership decisions, including the creation of a deputy director position for his department and that a staff meeting had not taken place for the past several years.

“[Anderson] decided not to have staff meetings since he lost his temper at the last one. He had Tim Gato appointed deputy director so when [Anderson] retires, he’ll be there. Everybody in that city is in his pocket,” Smith said. “That department is going to have a huge cloud over its head as long as [Anderson] is there. I have told him that.”

Messages left for Anderson were not returned.

Gailey said he was aware of the meeting between Smith and Anderson in December, but said it “was the last thing on his mind” when deciding how to fill a $630,000 gap in the municipal budget. The void was created by an unexpected reduction in revenues typically collected through building permits and other development related income, he said. 

“As you know, things aren’t being built around here,” Gailey said.

The loss in revenue – combined with an increase in employee health insurance and road salt costs, as well as other expenditures led him to offer early retirement options for all city employees earlier this month, he said. 

Six employees accepted the offer.

“We saved about $138,000 through [the early retirement offer] and we renegotiated our fuel contract from $3.22 a gallon down to $1.88, so we saved about $260,000 there,” Gailey said. “We turned over every rock.”

Collectively, Gailey said the five employees laid off last week received a total of approximately $284,000 in salaries and benefits annually. Combined with other decisions during the past month, the city will save nearly $682,000, he said. Gailey said he specifically considered managerial positions instead of other employees.

“We had to look at a way of making the cuts and not reducing the service,” he said. “If you cut people on the front lines, you’re reducing the service.”

When it comes to the deputy director position, Gailey said Gato – originally hired by the city as aquatics director in 2002 – had been performing outside his job description for nearly two years.

“Due to [Gato’s] high capacity level and the growth of the public works, parks, recreation and library, Tim was asked to play additional roles within the department,” Gailey wrote in an email to the Sentry. “Those roles included taking on golf course operations, transfer station operations, recycling program and the staffing of the energy and recycling committee. Do any of these responsibilities sound like aquatics?”

Smith said Anderson repeatedly explained Gato’s promotions to her and other city employees. 

“We were told Tim got the extra work because he has time and wants to learn more and take on more stuff,” she said. “He seems to have time to do other things.”

Smith said she did could not prove Gato had been promoted for any other reason, but declined to comment when asked if she believed Gailey and Anderson’s explanations.

Although the Sentry requested Gato’s career history with the city and filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Gailey, City Clerk Susan Mooney and City Attorney Sally Daggett on Monday, the information was not provided by press time Wednesday.

“[Information Technologies] has stated that they will have a disk by Wednesday morning,” Gailey wrote in an email to the Sentry. “The information is a little too much to do a quick turn-a-round on.”

The Freedom of Information Request also included Smith’s and Anderson’s emails during December and February – documents Smith said would be “interesting” to see, if the city could produce them. 

According to a press release from Jacobs on Tuesday, Smith was preparing a written statement for the city council in lieu of an exit interview Gailey declined to schedule. 

“Because I care about the residents of South Portland, I would much rather tell my story directly to the city manager than through the media,” she wrote in the release. “By sharing my concerns and my intimate knowledge of upper management, I hope it will provide better working conditions for the people who are left behind that continue providing services and programs to the people of South Portland.”