City Council members said Terrance Ashanta-Barker wasn’t a good fit for his roles within the city.
On Friday, the former neighborhoods director and emergency preparedness manager resigned from the city with a two-sentence resignation letter.
Ashanta-Barker’s annual salary was $130,000. He won’t receive a severance package, according to the city.
Barker was appointed by Mayor Alvin Brown to lead the city’s Neighborhoods Department in March 2012. He is the husband of the chief of staff for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
During reorganization this year, he was shifted to the fire department as an emergency manager.
Council member John Crescimbeni said his concern about Ashanta-Barker began about eight months after the appointment, which he initially supported.
Instead of being front-and-center at meetings when it came to neighborhoods issues, Crescimbeni said Ashanta-Barker wasn’t there. Instead, members of his staff attended and couldn’t always answer questions because they weren’t high enough on the policymaking team — an issue for several council members.
“That was a real problem,” Crescimbeni said.
Council President Clay Yarborough said he had concerns about the accuracy of information Ashanta-Barker provided at times. Sometimes events that Ashanta-Barker said had occurred hadn’t actually occurred, Yarborough said.
He cited one incident when Ashanta-Barker said conversations with hospital officials had taken place about taking over the city’s Sexual Assault Response Center.
Actually, a staff member had just left a message for a hospital official the same day Ashanta-Barker was questioned, Yarborough said.
“He was not necessarily the best fit for the position,” Yarborough said.
In April, Ashanta-Barker was transferred to the fire department, which angered some council members.
During budget hearings in August and September, council members voted to remove about $175,000 from the fire department’s budget, comprising Ashanta-Barker $130,000 salary plus benefits, from the fire department.
Yet, after the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, he was still on payroll, drawing the ire of some council members.
“We really didn’t think he was doing anything over there,” council member Matt Schellenberg said this month. “I implore you to let this person go.”
Schellenberg said it was “bad for morale” and affected taxpayers when city employees weren’t performing their duties.
On Tuesday, Schellenberg said his concerns were satisfied with the resignation, but that taxpayers deserve better.
“We need to do a better job of implementing the cleaning up of neighborhoods,” Schellenberg said, referring to Ashanta-Barker’s first role. “That was his job and he wasn’t very good at it.”
Being moved to another department and “being found” a job wasn’t acceptable, either, he said.
Yarborough agreed with that sentiment, saying if true “that would totally be the wrong way to go about things.”
“Ultimately, it’s not good for the position or the person,” he said.
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