Hilton Head’s town manager says he’s no longer job hunting because of this

After receiving a unanimous public pledge of support Tuesday from the Hilton Head Town Council, longtime town manager Steve Riley says he will stop looking for other jobs elsewhere.

“I’m very humbled by all of this,” Riley told The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette when contacted Wednesday. “And I’m honored to stay. There’s lessons and improvements I can take away. My plan is to stay.”

Riley, the town manager since 1995, said the support he’s gotten in the last few weeks and in dealing with Tropical Storm Irma caused him to take a step back, concluding that he will stick with the town if council members wanted him to stay.

Riley said he has withdrawn all pending job applications and told all references he would no longer need their help, though he declined to say how many applications were out or where he had applied.

Riley has sought at least four out-of-state government jobs since last summer and last week reportedly withdrew as a candidate for the position of Beaufort County administrator.

After more than a year of secretly meeting with outside attorneys to discuss Riley’s future, given his precarious employment situation, Town Council in a surprise move Tuesday voted unanimously to quit using the law firm for that purpose — and to support Riley going forward.

Their actions came after residents for the first time were allowed to weigh in publicly about the Riley matter. What wasn’t clear, however, from the four-hour-long meeting was how long the collective goodwill by council members toward Riley will last.

Bennett and Riley haven’t gotten along with each other since Bennett became mayor in December 2014. Bennett is generally supported by council members David Ames and Kim Likins, the mayor pro tem. The other four council members — John McCann, Bill Harkins, Tom Lennox and Marc Grant — lately have been in Riley’s camp, voting last month, for example, to move all future council discussions about the town manager’s future into public session.

Contacted Wednesday, Grant said he believed that the resolution passed Tuesday to support Riley was a step in the right direction.

“I think it’s a good start in the terms of council working together,” Grant said. “I believe Town Council voted on what’s right.”

Asked Wednesday if he thought the council’s long-running discussions about Riley were over given Tuesday’s vote, Harkins said he’d like to think so, but added that “time will only tell.”

“I’d like to take this commitment on face value that we’re going to try to work together,” he said.

“I think everybody wants to turn the page and do what’s right for the town,” said McCann, who recently announced his candidacy for mayor, when contacted Wednesday. “This is a win for the town, and it’s a win for the staff, too.”

Bennett, Likins and Lennox did not immediately respond Wednesday to requests for comment.

Ames said Wednesday that Riley is a “competent town manager and has done substantial things for this community.” But he added: “I would like to see greater emphasis on forward planning, and that’s why I support the visioning process. I would also like to see stronger involvement in leadership on the part of the town manager for the adopted Town Council priorities.”

Asked if Town Council would resume discussions about Riley’s employment status if he looks again for another job, Ames said, “I think we’ll have to deal with that situation when it arises.” He said he did not wish to comment further when asked if the council made the right decision in approving Tuesday’s resolution to support Riley.

During the meeting, however, Ames commented on the resolution, stating: “I know where the votes are tonight, and I may not be 100 percent as confident where we’re going ... but if we’re going to build bridges, then I’m willing to support this motion.”

McCann proposed the resolution, which affirms the council’s support for Riley and keeps him as town manager, terminates the “lawyer-client relationship” with Town Council’s outside legal counsel hired to deal with the Riley matter, and ends discussions — for now — about any amendments to or termination of his contract. Riley is the town’s highest-paid employee at $175,203 annually.

The resolution would be in effect “until a majority of the members of council votes otherwise at a regular meeting of council,” which, if that happened, would allow for discussions to resume about Riley’s future with the town.

The resolution was approved unanimously — an apparent change in the council’s direction at the onset of Tuesday’s meeting. McCann, for example, unsuccessfully attempted to amend the agenda to bring an item dealing with Riley from the closed, executive session into the open session.

The attitude among council members appeared to have shifted when Bennett said before the public comment portion of the meeting that he plans to meet with each council member and Riley regularly to improve communication among them, noting he wanted to “make sure my walk matches my talk.”

“I think it’s time to move on in the spirit of your remarks, which I was heartened to hear,” Harkins told Bennett. “Have we been working together as well as we should? As well as we could? Perhaps not. And I think this is a second chance.”

“We have a town manger that has demonstrated exemplary performance in the past,” Harkins continued. “Is he perfect? No. I’m not. None of us up here are. But we’re here to work as a team.”

The council’s consensus attitude continued for the remainder of the meeting. A recommendation from the Finance and Administrative Committee that would have allowed the town to hire a search firm for the “purpose of the assistance of searching and hiring a new town manager” died when no one moved to approve it.

To date, the town has paid at least $11,500 to the Columbia-based McNair Law Firm to discuss — behind closed doors — Riley’s employment situation, records show. Bennett said Tuesday those discussions took place because the town needed a plan if Riley accepted a job elsewhere.

Town staff attorney Brian Hulbert said Wednesday that to his knowledge, the town has not received another invoice from McNair, though he expects one to be submitted. Melissa Azallion, a McNair attorney involved in the Riley discussions, was present at Tuesday’s meeting.

This story was originally published October 4, 2017 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Hilton Head’s town manager says he’s no longer job hunting because of this."