Anderson The Executive Director of TEAM Santa Rosa Economic Development Council, Cindy Anderson, received a 60-day notice of termination Monday from Board Chairman Dave Hoxeng.

“None of the TEAM Board of Directors wanted to fire Cindy Anderson. No way did we want to fire her – or any of the staff of TEAM,” Hoxeng told Gulf Breeze News on Tuesday.

“The county commissioners, at least some of them, finally made it clear last week that they do not want to keep Cindy in place in any new organization. We are an independent board from the county commission, since it is a public-private partnership. However, if our funding is cut off, then we cannot operate. And since most of our funding is coming from the county commission, and those commissioners made it crystal clear last week that they are not going to renew the contract with TEAM Santa Rosa, we have to start shutting it down. This is all part of that process.”

Anderson’s contract requires a 60-day notice of termination.

Hoxeng, the volunteer chair of the TEAM Board of Directors, also said his “unhappy job” Tuesday would be to send similar letters of a 60-day notice of job termination to other paid staff members of the TEAM Santa Rosa office.

The action was necessary because the county commission voted not to extend TEAM Santa Rosa’s contract past March 31.

Hoxeng said he will also need to have a “partial tax return” to the IRS before March 31 as part of the shutdown process. “It will probably take me about 30 days to get everything wound down,” he said.

However, County Commissioner Don Salter told Gulf Breeze News Tuesday that he asked the county administrator this week to talk personally with the staff of TEAM to assure them they would have jobs after March 31.

“There are too many moving pieces to economic development, and we cannot afford to close down our economic development on March 31,” Salter said. “The idea of the 15-member transitional committee was to come back with some recommendations on some reorganization – never to delete or demolish anything. One commissioner did make the motion the first day of discussion to abolish TEAM and start over, but that was never seriously discussed, and that is not what the commission decided Thursday in the final vote.”

The 15-member transitional committee appointed last Thursday by the commissioners to bring back recommendations for the future of economic development by mid-March includes:

District 1-Alan Isaacson of Pace; Don Richards of Gulf Breeze; Ed Fortune of Pace; District 2 - Rick Paschall of Milton; Kim Macarthy of Milton; Gerry Goldstein of Gulf Breeze; District 3 - Ferd Salomon of Pace; Joshua C. Durst of Pace, Phillip Wright of Pace; District 4 - Jerry Couey of Milton, Laurie Gallup of Navarre Beach, Carol Boston of Navarre; District 5 – Claude Duvall of Milton, Beverly Zimmern of Gulf Breeze, and Jeff Helms.

The first meeting of that committee is Monday, Feb. 5 in the county commission chambers and will be public, as well as video live broadcast and taped.

Salter said he could even envision extending the TEAM Santa Rosa contract for a short term after March 31 until the new entity gets in place, with hopefully the same staff except Anderson and the same board of directors.

County Commissioner Lane Lynchard of Gulf Breeze agreed.

“I don’t see March 31 as any sort of drop dead-deadline,” Lynchard said. “Our economic development future is far too important to put an artificial deadline on this committee, so if it takes longer than 60 days, then it does. I can see us extending the current contract with TEAM until we come up with whatever entity we put in place.”

Lynchard said he hopes to see the staff now in place at TEAM stay on with the new organization, whatever that may be.

“We have a good staff at TEAM that has good relationships with businesses here and ones that are working to locate here. But I do believe Cindy Anderson needs to go,” he said. “A change in leadership is what precipitated this entire thing. There have been some missteps by TEAM over the past couple years, and some perception of missteps, so a change in leadership I believe is necessary.”

Salter is concerned about projects now in the economic development pipeline.

“We have an important project for Gulf Breeze in the pipeline, as well as some grant monies we are working on and some federal monies,” he said. “We need people in place that have the knowledge and expertise with these projects to keep things going – as in the staff of TEAM. We cannot just turn the faucet off on March 31. And it will take probably at least six months to do the national search and hire a new CEO of our economic development organization, and we sure cannot be down an entire staff all that time.”