The last time Walton County commissioners selected a county administrator, their pick made it just over a year before being shown the door.
On Tuesday the county commission will try again, and its staff has recommended changes in the way the selection process is handled.
Those alterations will be debated and voted on before the actual decision is made regarding who will replace ousted former administrator Greg Kisela.
Commissioner Cindy Meadows, for one, isn’t sure she likes the selection process the staff has come up with. And County Commission chairman Ken Pridgen said, ultimately, it will be the elected officials who decide how best to choose their new administrator.
“They can decide to vote however they want to do it,” Pridgen said.
The new selection procedure would have each of the five county commissioners choose their top candidate for the administrator’s job, according to a draft version sent out Jan. 15 by assistant county administrator Dede Hinote.
Read tax association email on voting change »
If, on the first ballot, one candidate receives three or more votes, the board would be asked to select that candidate to receive an offer for the position.
“If no candidate receives three or more votes, then another vote will need to occur,” Hinote said in her email, “with the candidate with the least number of votes not considered.”
The process will be repeated until there is a single candidate with three votes, according to the Hinote email.
Meadows requested the voting instructions county commissioners would receive Tuesday.
“You can’t take anything for granted,” she said. “I want to know before I go in what’s going to happen.”
She said she was surprised by the way the selection process had been altered.
“I thought we were going to rank the top three choices,” she said. “Then if our top choice doesn’t take the job for some reason we would have a number two.”
When Kisela was selected in 2011, the four candidates were ranked and the candidate receiving the most votes was offered the job.
This year, the candidates include two Walton County residents and four men with county government experience in other Florida communities.
lGeorge “Parrish” Barwick has been the county coordinator for Jefferson County since last July.
lLyndon Bonner was city manager for North Miami Beach from 2011 until his contract expired last September.
lTed Lakey has been county administrator for Jackson County since 2003.
lRobert Halfhill has been public works director for Charlotte County since 2009.
lWalton County resident Larry Jones spent 12 years on the County Commission and worked as a governmental liaison for Waste Management.
lWalton County resident Corey Godwin has served as Walton County’s chief deputy tax collector since Jan. 4, 2005.
Both Meadows and Pridgen said they were encouraged by the quality of the candidate pool from which they will select their next county commissioner.
“It’s going to be a difficult decision. We have some people who are really qualified,” Meadows said. “I was impressed by their knowledge and their time spent in county government.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.