Manager Defends Glenview’s New Finance Chief

Based on newspaper accounts in Daytona Beach, Florida, local government is having financial problems, and last year state auditors found a fair number of violations in the way Daytona Beach had done business. They said the community misused TIF money, bought one piece of land for more than its assessed value and acquired another parcel without having it assessed.

Since 2005, Ricardo Kisner had served as the community’s chief financial officer, so The Watch was puzzled when Glenview’s Village Manager Todd Hileman announced he was hiring Kisner to replace retiring finance chief Dan Wiersman.

Hileman says he shared our concerns until he paid a visit to Daytona Beach to talk with Kisner’s former boss and other department heads. “I wanted to look them in the eye and hear what they had to say,” Hileman explains. “The job of finance director is as important as the police chief, so we spent a lot of time researching Rick. He interviewed well. He had a lot of great technical skills, but we wanted to be sure.”

In the end, Hileman concluded that Kisner was an exceptional man caught in a bad situation. Daytona Beach council members are elected from districts rather than at large, and Hileman contends that form of govenment has turned the town into a “political hotbed,” where in-fighting is the norm, and reform is difficult.

As in Glenview under former Village Manager Paul McCarthy, each department head in Daytona Beach is responsible for his or her own budget, and that may also make it harder for top city officials to get a grip on how money is spent.