Vasquez unsuccessfully sought to place Van Zant on paid administrative leave<\/a> during an Aug. 4 City Commission meeting. She and Commissioner Arthur Czyszczon supported the motion, while Mayor John Doctor and Commissioner Arden Dickey opposed it. Commissioner Chris Clark was absent but later publicly defended Van Zant.<\/p>\nSix days later, Assistant City Manager and Public Works Director Gary Volenec emailed members of the city\u2019s executive team saying Doctor, Dickey and Clark wanted to speak with employees about the complaint.<\/p>\n
Volenec described them as \u201cthe three Commissioners who voted against suspending the City Manager,\u201d although Clark did not participate in the Aug. 4 vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe three Commissioners who voted against suspending the City Manager would like to conduct brief interviews with staff to better understand the circumstances and allegations outlined in the complaint,\u201d Volenec wrote.<\/p>\n
He told employees to \u201cbe prepared to meet with the Commissioners\u201d if contacted. Volenec also wrote that Van Zant would be out of the office that week \u201cto allow the process to proceed without distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Less than an hour later, Bobbie Shay Lee, whom the city identifies on its Facebook page as its community development director, forwarded Volenec\u2019s message to the city\u2019s attorneys and Human Resources Director Jessica Zamora.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not comfortable with this request below,\u201d Lee wrote.<\/p>\n
Lee also referenced an unfinished notice seeking protection under the Whistle-Blower Act and said she could supplement it with concerns including gross mismanagement, waste of public funds, fraud or neglect of duty. Her email did not identify who she believed may have committed such acts or establish that they occurred.<\/p>\n
Lee declined to comment to the Catalyst.<\/p>\n
Vasquez said she learned about the proposed interviews after city employees contacted her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re like \u2026 what are the repercussions?\u201d Vasquez said. \u201cWhat are they going to ask us? And what happens if we don\u2019t answer them? And what happens if we do answer them?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Catalyst could not independently verify those conversations. Vasquez said she also did not know whether the interviews ultimately took place.<\/p>\n
The Catalyst contacted Doctor, Dickey and Clark seeking comment about the proposed interviews but did not receive responses.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the city had already begun arranging an independent investigation.<\/p>\n
Vasquez filed her formal complaint July 17, one day after an encounter with Van Zant that she described as confrontational. The following morning, Zamora told Van Zant she had consulted with the city\u2019s attorneys and insurance carrier and submitted a claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding is that an independent investigation will be conducted under our coverage policy,\u201d Zamora wrote.<\/p>\n
Emails between the city and its claims administrator show that by Aug. 3, officials were working to bring in attorney Cindy Townsend. The administrator wrote that the city requested an outside investigator \u201cdue to internal conflicts of interest.\u201d Townsend confirmed the following day that the conflict check had been completed and another attorney would assist.<\/p>\n
Vasquez said\u00a0she was scheduled to speak with the outside investigator last week, but the interview was canceled shortly before it was set to begin because the investigator had not yet spoken with the city attorney. At the time of the interview, it had not been rescheduled.<\/p>\n
City spokesperson Jason Beisel said officials could not discuss the specific allegations while the investigation remains underway.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause this involves a personnel matter currently under internal investigation, we\u2019re unable to comment on the specific allegations or details while the process is ongoing,\u201d Beisel said.<\/p>\n
He said withholding comment during an active investigation is standard practice intended to protect the integrity of the process and ensure fairness to those involved.<\/p>\n
The Catalyst also sought comment from Van Zant but did not receive a response.<\/p>\n
Vasquez\u2019s July 17 complaint, obtained via a public records request, provides more detail about the allegations. She described the previous day\u2019s City Hall encounter as part of a pattern of increasingly \u201caggressive, confrontational, and unprofessional\u201d interactions with Van Zant.<\/p>\n
Vasquez later added a July 21 commission workshop exchange to her complaint. A review of the meeting shows that when she sought answers from Volenec about the Sunset Beach Pavilion, Van Zant objected, saying he wanted \u201cto be recognized before my staff is summoned.\u201d He said Vasquez could have brought her questions to him and he would have gotten the answers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t summon Gary,\u201d Vasquez responded. \u201cBut it is public works and that\u2019s who it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview, Vasquez said she viewed the exchange as part of a broader problem with her ability to communicate directly with department heads.<\/p>\n
Van Zant\u2019s supporters on the commission have rejected Vasquez\u2019s characterization of his leadership. At the Aug. 4 meeting, Dickey said he meets with Van Zant weekly, has seen no evidence of financial mismanagement and could not recall him failing to respond to a request. Doctor similarly said he had not experienced the conduct Vasquez described.<\/p>\n
Clark was more pointed in an email to the Catalyst after the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never seen any of the behaviors that the Vice Mayor accused him of. Not ever,\u201d Clark wrote. He called the effort a \u201ccoordinated attack\u201d on Van Zant that was \u201cpurely political.\u201d<\/p>\n
The outside review remains unresolved, and the records released so far do not establish whether Vasquez\u2019s allegations are substantiated.<\/p>\n
Vasquez said she has faced criticism since filing the complaint but maintained that raising her concerns was necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody\u2019s got to speak up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treasure Island\u2019s investigation into allegations against City Manager Charlie Van Zant has raised an uncomfortable question inside City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-374932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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