The 3% Rule

I don't disagree at all. I try to pay close attention to the issue of merger since I live in a town (Tallahassee) that will, at some point, merge with Leon County because we're the only municipality in the county and the city sells power and its boundaries expand yearly.

I would have wished that we could have followed a course that was much more like the one they took in Charlotte, NC when they merged with Mecklenberg County. They had time to work out all of the conflicting contractual, pay, staffing and SOP issues before they flipped the switch.

Since this merger was borne from a political intiative, it left little time to fully address many of the issues that clearly would have made this transition easier. I have no doubt that we would have made many better decisions about organization, staffing and assignments had there been another way.

The request for me to come was born out of this same sense of expediency and based largely on my immediate availability. I came only because I thought that, based on my background (my work and consulting experiences), I could be helpful in the short run which could be not more than a year (some times that year doesn't feel real short) and that following that relatively brief period and more permanent selection could be made in a manner that you describe.

Be safe..