STUART, Fla. \u2014 Members of the Stuart city commission are considering firing City Manager Michael Mortell, yet are refusing to give a reason why.<\/p>\n
In a commission meeting on Monday, Commissioner Sean Reed called for Mortell’s resignation, and then made a motion to remove him from office and appoint someone else in the interim. Reed offered no explanation why, except to say he wanted to help pick the next city manager.<\/p>\n
Mortell has been the city manager of Stuart for two years. Mortell said he was expecting a conversation about his contract and seemed caught off guard by the calls to resign.<\/p>\n
The mayor and commissioners spoke up both in favor of firing Mortell and defending his position, with several residents concerned about the lack of cause for his firing.<\/p>\n
In response, Commissioner Chris Collins said “out of respect for Mike” he would “rather not open up everything and try to litigate his faults,” but is backing Reed’s efforts to oust him.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Laura Giobbi also argued that the details of the city manager’s performance should be kept private. From her first day as a commissioner in 2024, she said, there have been issues with Mortell of misrepresentation and trust. She declined to elaborate during the meeting.<\/p>\n
The commission is expected to vote on Mortell’s future at a meeting on Oct. 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STUART, Fla. \u2014 Members of the Stuart city commission are considering firing City Manager Michael Mortell, yet are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8654,965,3306,171,173,172],"class_list":{"0":"post-8420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-port-st-lucie","8":"tag-commissioner-sean-reed","9":"tag-michael-mortell","10":"tag-mike-mortell","11":"tag-port-st-lucie","12":"tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","13":"tag-port-st-lucie-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8420","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=8420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}