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Mexico Beach council fires Truitt over beach permit dispute

MEXICO BEACH, Fla. (WMBB) – “Jerry’s made a motion to terminate, is there a second?” City of Mexico Beach Mayor Richard Wolff said.

“I mean… I’ll second,” Jason Adams said.

During their April 23 meeting, Mexico Beach city council members voted 4-to-1 to fire city administrator Chris Truitt.

At the time, Truitt was under investigation for alleged harassment of city employees.
But that’s not why he was fired.

Truitt issued two temporary vendor permits allowing the sale of ice cream and chair rentals on the beach.

Council members said they’d previously told Truitt they didn’t want vendors bothering people on the beach.

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“Absolutely don’t want Panama City Beach, we absolutely don’t want kinds of things that we see on other beaches. You want to maintain let’s call it old Mexico Beach,” Council Member Erik Fosshage said.

The next day, on April 24, the Krizner Group delivered its investigative report into Truitt’s behavior.

Investigators found Truitt should face disciplinary action and receive additional training, but did not recommend his termination.

The report also recommends that city officials revise the employee handbook, conduct yearly training, and institute procedures for reporting harassment and investigating complaints.

Council members knew they’d be getting the report the day after they fired Truitt, but said it had nothing to do with the beach permitting issue.

“The H.R. is looking into the other allegations and complaints and what not and then this came after that and it’s really a separate issue,” the City’s Attorney said.

The council held a special meeting on April 25, where they agreed to hire Smigielski as interim city administrator.

During our interview on Wednesday with Smigielski, we were unaware of Truitt’s firing or the fact the report was completed.

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News 13 asked if Truitt were to be fired, would he be interested in the job permanently? He said no.

“I have been retired for a few years now, so I need to go back to chasing grandkids around,” Smigielski said.

But he didn’t tell us Truitt was already gone.

Smigielski did that Thursday morning, when he called and asked us to change our story.

When we requested that he do another interview, he declined. So did Mayor Richard Wolff, who said he was worried about what the public would think of Truitt’s firing, even though it happened during a public meeting.

Smigielski told us he plans to be interim city administrator for about three months, while the city presumably searches for a permanent replacement.

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