North Miami is firing its city manager. He gets 32 weeks’ pay and a $45,000 SUV

North Miami’s city council on Tuesday approved a severance package for City Manager Larry Spring that includes 32 weeks of pay, a city-owned car worth $45,000 and an iPad, then said they would fire him as soon as the agreement was signed. His last day of work will be Jan. 31.

It was not a surprise.

In a Dec. 31 letter to the council, a lawyer for Spring said the manager had learned the council was “prepared to terminate him to allow a new City Manager to be appointed.” Spring, therefore, was asking the council to fire him without cause.

“Mr. Spring understands the decision and has no desire to impede the City Council’s ability to have the City Manager of its choosing,” wrote Spring’s attorney, Joseph Gosz.

But none of the elected officials, nor Spring himself, seemed to want to tell residents on Tuesday exactly why Spring is on his way out.

“I’m the mayor of the city. I can hire, I can fire a city manager,” said Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime after Councilwoman Carol Keys pressed her colleagues on why Spring was leaving. “If someone wants to do so, there is nothing unusual.”

The council agreed to the terms Spring requested: termination without cause, 20 weeks of severance pay as outlined in his contract, plus an additional three months’ pay allowed under an odd provision in the city charter that deals specifically with the firing of city managers.

In exchange, Spring agreed to waive his right to a public hearing within three months on why he’s being fired.

“Instead of 12 weeks of back and forth with the manager, he gets what is required under his contract, plus the car,” City Attorney Jeff Cazeau said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Florida law generally limits public employees to 20 weeks of severance pay plus up to six additional weeks for “the settlement of an employment dispute.” But Gosz told the Herald in an email that Spring’s request was proper.

“Given the procedures available to the city and to Mr. Spring, he would be able to collect salary, whether actively working or not, for a period after any resolution terminating him without cause, and he would be entitled to a hearing,” Gosz said. “We have indicated that Mr. Spring is willing to waive those procedures (which will expedite everything) if the city agrees with our request for 12 weeks of salary.”

Several council members raised concerns about Spring’s additional request to keep a city car, which Spring said was “fairly new” to the city’s fleet and valued at around $45,000. City Clerk Vanessa Joseph told the Herald on Wednesday that the car is a 2020 GMC Yukon SLT. One councilor, Alix Desulme, voted against the severance proposal as a result, while four others voted in favor.

“The car was an important inclusion for us in exchange for a [waiver],” Gosz told the council.

Spring, who became city manager in 2016 and was previously the city’s finance director and the chief financial officer for the city of Miami, makes $240,000 per year.

Two council members, Keys and Scott Galvin, said they were disappointed to see Spring go. Galvin, who has served on the council for 21 years, said the city has had about 10 different managers during his tenure and called Spring “the best city manager we’ve had in decades.”

“I’m not happy to see things unfurl the way they are,” Galvin told the Miami Herald before Tuesday’s meeting. “I would have been thrilled if he stuck around another 10 [to] 15 years.”

Keys called Spring’s accomplishments “amazing” during the council meeting, citing economic development in the city, and accused fellow council members of being “wishy-washy” about whether they wanted to go in a different direction.

Desulme, who has been critical of Spring, shot back by saying he never had a discussion with the manager about possibly firing him.

“I didn’t know this was coming,” Desulme told the Herald.

During the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting, several residents praised Spring and challenged the council’s reasoning.

“For the first time in years, I’ve seen a professional organization here,” said Kenneth Each, a former North Miami police chief. “To have him go out the door is disgraceful.”

But there were signs of discontent and questions about fiscal responsibility during Spring’s tenure. His departure comes a month after a tense council meeting where he faced heat from Desulme and Bien-Aime, including a suggestion by the mayor that Spring hasn’t done enough to address an $8 million budget deficit dating back to 2018.

Bien-Aime said at the Dec. 10 meeting that the deficit at the end of the most recent fiscal year was still around $8 million — although he declined to say how he knew that information after Spring said the figure wouldn’t become clear until an audit is completed in the coming weeks.

“What are you doing differently in order to avoid another deficit?” Bien-Aime asked Spring.

Spring defended his work, saying he was closely monitoring city expenditures, giving council members monthly reports on their own spending, and telling the council about any requests for spending that was not already budgeted.

When the mayor said the city keeps “doing the same thing again and again” with its budget, Spring came back: “I don’t know where you get that sentiment from.”

Bien-Aime and Councilwoman Mary Estime-Irvin did not respond to requests for comment before Tuesday’s meeting.

As the meeting concluded, Spring thanked city staff and said he knows “nothing lasts forever.”

“These four years was on some level about me proving something to myself: that I could be given the keys to the car and drive,” Spring said, speaking metaphorically about the city. “Everything wasn’t agreeable, everything wasn’t perfect, but I put my best foot forward.”

There’s already buzz about who could be hired next. Multiple sources told the Herald that Hans Ottinot, the former city attorney in Sunny Isles Beach, has been discussed as a potential candidate.

Ottinot declined to comment Tuesday.

The council voted unanimously to appoint Deputy City Manager Arthur Sorey as interim city manager starting Feb. 1.

In late 2018, North Miami’s former assistant budget director, Terry Henley, publicly accused Spring and Sorey of obscuring a deficit of between $7 million and $20 million in the city’s $70 million budget.

Henley said the officials had siphoned money from city reserves and utilities and misrepresented other revenue streams and debts in order to make the budget look balanced. He also alleged he was offered “hush money” by the city the morning after the budget passed as part of a separation agreement presented to him.

Henley filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the city in March 2019. A hearing on the city’s motion to dismiss Henley’s second amended complaint is set for Friday.

Update: This story has been updated to include details about the SUV.

This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 6:15 AM.