Ottawa County brings back interim administrator who resigned

Ottawa County Board of Commissioners chose to keep the interim county administrator, despite him handing in his resignation letter earlier this month.

On Tuesday, the county board passed a resolution to keep Jon Anderson in the role until the end of the year as a part-time employee. Anderson submitted his resignation roughly three weeks before Tuesday's meeting.

His last day was scheduled to be October 6.

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During the same meeting, the board agreed to create a committee to find a new permanent candidate.

Those members include Chairperson Joe Moss, Vice Chairperson Sylvia Rhodea, along with commissioners Gretchen Cosby, Allison Miedema, and Roger Belknap.

All five members of the Executive Transition Committee are backed by Ottawa Impact (OI).

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Two of the commissioners who will head up the search for a new county leader, Cosby and Belknap, lost their primary races in August. Both have since filed to be write-in candidates for their seats in November's general election. As write-in candidates, they cannot campaign with any party affiliation.

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Before the resolution passed, FOX 17 spoke to Moss to understand why he chose these five people for the committee.

"The five people that are listed in the proposed resolution are the five chairs of the board, and they are people who are in board leadership, who are helping lead the county," Moss explained.

That means that current board members may be choosing an appointee that they won't oversee.

Sources tell FOX 17 some current commissioners had an issue with previous board members, who lost the election in 2022 but still hired Adeline Hambley as the health officer before the end of their terms.

That issue was brought up at a public removal hearing for the health officer in October 2023. Hambley's attorney subpoenaed the previous County Administrator, John Shay, about that decision.

Shay testified that he spoke with Moss and Rhodea in December 2022, who had been elected but were not yet sworn in to the board, about hiring Hambley as the health officer.

"They were upset with that. They felt that the incoming board should make that decision and not the outgoing board," Shay said in his testimony.

Tuesday night, FOX 17 asked Moss about that process, and if the new board members in January 2023 were unhappy with how the health officer appointment had been handled.

"That's not accurate," Moss replied. "I was not thrilled that there were incoming board members who were asking for information and then were flatly denied. At the very last second, the prior board appointed somebody with no public meetings and, no public information, and zero transparency. Yeah, that was a problem for me."

In January 2023 the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners moved to reject Hambley's appointment as Health Director. The majority OI board argued the process hadn't followed state laws and tried to keep her as interim director. After hearings in court and a removal hearing, the board and Hambley reached a deal where she kept the permanent role.

Ottawa County Department of Public Health

Moss says this hiring process will be handled more openly than how the former board conducted Hambley's hiring.

"That's why we're putting it up for open discussion. That's why we're putting in writing in the resolution that it will use the Open Meetings Act to do its meetings, that it will be public and transparent and engage with an independent firm," Moss said.

This motion to create this search comes more than six months after the board majority fired the man they hired in January 2023 , John Gibbs.

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"We have three months left of this current calendar year and moving into a new fiscal year as of October 1. This is actually an excellent time to go from budget to a different priority," Moss said. "So if people are interested, if they have administrative leadership experience, if they're a CEO of a company or CFO of a company, or are engaged in managing teams of people, it's an excellent opportunity."

If the commissioners pick a new county administrator before January, the board is only allowed to give the candidate a one-year contract, according to a source.

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