The Belleville City Council hired a fast-talking city manager with neither education nor experience, but with a penchant for stretching the truth.
During his March 14 interview for the job of Belleville City Manager, Walter Mears told the City Council that he held a PhD in Theology.
(He also wrote that he had a PhD on the application for appointment to city council last summer.)
Recently, in a brief interview at the Independent office, he said his degree was from Concordia University in Texas and that he got the PhD in the year 2000.
When asked if he went to Texas, he replied, “a couple of times.” He said he got the degree through an “interflex” program they no longer offer.
The Independent recently called the registrar’s office at Concordia University in Austin, Texas, and talked to Tracy. She said Concordia not only never has conferred PhDs, the university has no distance learning or “interflex program” offered at all and never has. The university has one master’s degree program and all the rest are undergraduate programs, she said.
There are a few online courses at Concordia, but you have to come to the university full time for degree work. Also, Concordia offers one course in theology and that is in an undergraduate class.
Actually, not only does Mears not hold a PhD degree, but the only educational degree he does hold is a diploma received in 1995 from Belleville High School. That was confirmed through microfilm records at the BHS counseling office.
Mears told the Independent he does not have a bachelor’s or master’s degree and “went right for the PhD.” He said his dissertation was on comparing early Christianity to present Christianity. He said they were different.
When the Independent asked if his dissertation was published, he did not reply.
Mears did attend classes at Eastern Michigan University, but left EMU without a degree of any kind.
On Friday, the Independent asked Mears to confirm that it was, indeed, Concordia that granted him his degree and he said he would not comment on his education any more.
“The proof is in the pudding. I’m doing the job I was hired to do,” he said Friday.
But, he said, in the future if the Independent wanted any comment on city business it was not to ask him, but to give it to Clerk/Treasurer Diana Kollmeyer, who would then ask him and relay the reply to the paper.
The Independent asked about the assistant he is seeking with Downtown Development Authority funding. He said the DDA is considering an assistant to just work on DDA matters, a job the city manager has done in the past when there was no DDA director.
At his March 14 interview before the city council, he said he was an exchange student after leaving BHS. Later he said he spent four months in Germany. He said he went to theology school and spent the last few months working at the University of Michigan after finishing his dissertation.
When asked by Councilman George Chedrue at a public meeting about his education, Mears said, “My education is not applicable to the position.”
When asked about how much pay he would require, he said, “I would expect $65,000.”
An article in the March 15 Belleville Enterprise said Mears said the $65,000 salary would be a pay cut for him.
But information, available from the University of Michigan, shows that Mears’ salary as Health Navigator Assistant at the U of M Medical Management Center was actually half that: $32,445 in the 2006-07 fiscal year, up from $28,578 in 2004-05 and $27,746 in 2003-04, when he was Client Services Assistant.
When asked about his supervisory experience by the council, he said he directed four employees and the number went up to 22 on occasion. Actually, Mears was a clerk.
This conflicts with the resume he presented to the council which lists “Recent Professional Experience” from 2005 to present as “Executive Vice President of Medical Affairs for the U of M Hospitals and Health Systems,” a position actually held by Dr. Robert Kelch, who earns a base salary of $656,910, the highest base salary paid to a university employee.
Dr. Kelch was in the news recently because he was enticed by the U of M president not to retire by an additional $500,000 in take-home pay over the next two years.
When questioned about his resume, Mears said that actually he reported to the vice president and he was describing the department in which he worked rather than his job.
Actually, Mears never worked at the medical school at all, but in the Medical Management Center, which handles the details of payments for patient care.
When Mears applied to be appointed to the position of council member last summer, he said his employer was the “University of Michigan Medical School.”
At the March 14 meeting, Don Bluhm asked about credentials required in the advertisement the city ran for the city manager’s position.
The advertisement, that ran Jan. 4 and 11 in the Independent and in other venues, read: “Requires a Bachelor’s Degree in public administration, business, or related field. Preferred requirements include grant writing and project management skills, and knowledge of all phases of municipal governance.”
The salary was advertised as up to $65,000 plus benefits “depending on qualifications and experience.”
Bluhm asked about Mears’ education and experience and said, “I wondered how he stacked up.” He said he based his question on the problems the city had with getting a good treasurer and the “former police chief.”
(The city had hired three inadequate treasurers in a row and finally contracted with Plante Moran to do the city’s financial work.)
Mayor Tom Fielder said the council was asking for experience in municipal administration and, “I don’t think there was a degree required.” He said the council was going to amend the requirements to change to “looking for experience in city government, but decided to do this instead.”
Mayor Fielder referred to the council’s decision to set aside all of the 38 candidates who applied for the position, some of them assistant city managers with experience and degrees, to offer the job to a councilman who had been appointed to the position eight months earlier – with no experience or education.
All the requirements were abandoned in order to hire Mears, including requirements of the City Charter, considered the bible for Belleville City operation.
The Belleville City Charter outlines the rules for appointment of a city manager in Section 8.2 of Chapter VIII.
It reads: “He shall be selected solely on the basis of his executive and administrative qualifications with special reference to his training and actual experience in municipal administration …”
Former Councilman Richard Smith, who was one of the writers of the present charter, said the qualifications for city manager were written that way because, “We wanted whoever doing the search to do a diligent search and get the best person possible.”
Clerk / Treasurer Diana Kollmeyer said the oath she gives to new city council members has them swear to uphold the U.S. and State constitutions, but they do not swear to uphold the City Charter.
When Mayor Fielder introduced Mears as a candidate for a city council appointment last summer, he said, “He’s one of mine,” referring to Mears being one of his former civics students at BHS.
Council members Lori Hecksel and Bill Emerson had volunteered to check Mears’ background and said they saw the certified transcript of Mears’ PhD, but he took the paperwork back and they did not keep a copy for his personnel file. When asked by the Independent, Hecksel could not remember the name of the university granting the degree.
Hecksel said during his public interview that Mears has “morals and integrity most government officials don’t have. Let’s be honest.”
While Mears claimed to have written a series of successful grant applications, the only successful grant documented at the U of M Health System is a Fostering Innovation Grant (FIG) for seed money to help start a discretionary account, a “Helping Hands Fund,” to assist Medicare-eligible patients.
The FIGs gave away 34 grants over two years for a total of $235,205 or an average of just under $7,000 each. The FIGs were billed as “simple to apply” and anyone, no matter what their position, was eligible.
Other winners included “Smile Check” for the psychiatry department, “Adopt-A-Hallway” for the surgery department, “Ask Me if I Washed My Hands” for the Infection Control and Epidemiology department, and “Slurpee Solution for Dehydrated Children” in the Emergency Department.
When the vote came up to hire Mears as city manager, Councilman Chedraue was the only one voting no. Voting yes were Councilmembers Hecksel and Emerson and Mayor Fielder.
