TREASURE ISLAND — City commissioners voted 3-1 on Sept. 10 to end the city’s pursuit of an outside investigation into City Manager Charles Van Zant, after three commissioners said their own interviews with senior staff turned up nothing to support allegations that he created a hostile work environment.
Commissioner Chris Clark, who made the motion, urged the city to withdraw its request for the investigation and ask its insurance carrier to bring the inquiry to an immediate conclusion. Clark, Commissioner Arden Dickey and Mayor John Doctor voted in favor. Vice Mayor Tammy Vasquez, whose complaint prompted the investigation, abstained from voting, as she was involved in the matter under investigation. Commissioner Arthur Czyszczon voted against.
At the commission’s Aug. 4 meeting, Vasquez accused Van Zant of workplace misconduct, blocking commissioners’ inquiries, fiscal mismanagement and creating a hostile work environment. She asked the city’s human resources department to investigate. With only four members present, the commission split 2-2 on her request to place Van Zant on administrative leave, and no action was taken.
Earlier in the Sept. 10 meeting, commissioners voted along the same lines to take up Clark’s request to decide whether the investigation should continue.
Clark then explained how the investigation reached its current form. After consulting with the city attorney and the insurance carrier, human resources referred Vasquez’s written complaint to the carrier, which assigned an outside attorney.
“The commission itself did not order that investigation, and the insurance carrier has since substantially narrowed the scope of the investigation,” Clark said.
He said the carrier declined to look into most of the allegations, determining they concerned internal city matters. What remains is limited to whether Van Zant engaged in discriminatory or inappropriate conduct toward Vasquez because of her sex.
Because the complaint also suggested a broader concern about how women are treated at City Hall, Clark said, he set out to learn whether anything supported it. With Van Zant’s authorization, he spoke individually with nine senior employees, five men and four women, about the city manager and the workplace.
“My conversations did not produce any, and I want to stress the word any, information that in my judgment corroborates the allegation that the city manager has created a hostile or discriminatory work environment or has engaged in a pattern of any inappropriate treatment of women,” Clark said.
None of the nine said they had witnessed such behavior, Clark said. About half kept talking after he finished his questions, telling him “that’s just not who Charlie is” and that they would leave if Van Zant were fired.
“A lot of people are here because they like working for Charlie, and that’s what I’ve found,” Clark said.
He said raising complaints is valid, “but fairness works in both directions.” Calling the allegations serious, he said Van Zant “should not have to sit here for months and months and have this hanging over his head.”
Doctor and Dickey said they had separately interviewed the city manager’s direct reports and reached the same conclusion.
“There were no issues that anyone had,” Doctor said. “As a matter of fact, I had more people calling him ‘a southern gentleman’ than anything else.”
Dickey said no one he spoke with had witnessed inappropriate behavior. “I came away feeling that there isn’t a significant issue here,” he said.
He said he agreed with Clark. “I think we should close this issue out and move on,” Dickey said.
Czyszczon, who joined Vasquez in opposing the motion, took aim at Van Zant’s responsiveness. It appears the city manager “is not stonewalling the three of you with not responding to emails,” he told his colleagues. “Maybe he could answer my emails when I send them to him.”
That complaint isn’t new. In May, Czyszczon moved to end Van Zant’s contract, citing a lack of confidence and unanswered emails. Instead, the commission extended the contract for 14 months, with Vasquez joining Doctor, Dickey and Clark in giving Van Zant more time to settle into the job.