Fired Fort Oglethorpe City Manager Jim Dinley got four months severance pay after council members said they ousted him for giving misleading statements.

Dinley, who said he received a check for “just a shade under $30,000” on April 17, was pleased the council didn’t enter into a court battle over the money. It’s a battle the city would have lost, he said, since an agreement he signed when he took the job in June 2004 stipulated he would get severance pay.

“When they terminated me, they said (it was) for cause,” he said. “In the agreement, if they could have proved malfeasance they could have withheld severance pay.”

Georgia law did not require a public vote on the package, interim City Manager Ron Goulart said, since Dinley’s contract already provided he could receive the pay. He said a release document Dinley signed states he won’t sue the city now that he has the package. Without the release, he could have still sued.

“It was a pretty good deal for the city,” Goulart said. “(The release) was beyond the scope of his contract.”

He said the city wrote Dinley a check for $29,452.80. After deductions for taxes and other withholdings, the check came to $15,808.21, he said. Dinley said Goulart initially wrote the check for less than that, which Goulart admitted. Goulart said Dinley’s attorney had made the same mistake, thinking Dinley’s salary was smaller.

“Nothing was done to try to beat him out of the four-month contract,” Goulart said. “It was an honest mistake.”

If Dinley had committed a crime, the council could have made a case to not release his severance pay. Dinley said officials with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s office said he didn’t commit any crimes.

The council members who fired him said he gave “false misleading and inconsistent” statements during a one-and-a-half-year-old case they believe involved extortion.

Dinley had told a GBI investigator he heard Councilman Richard Egeland’s wife, Wanda, tell Mayor Judd Burkhart she would say he sexually harassed her and had a “hit list” of people to fire unless he agreed to several conditions, including giving her money. Later, Dinley said he did not interpret the comments as extortion because he knew Egeland’s wife was dealing with mental issues.

Burkhart and council members Steve Brandon, Louis Hamm and Jane Moye said Dinley’s statements were contradictory and misleading. They voted to fire him on March 27. Egeland and Councilman Harold Silcox opposed the dismissal.

As for his plans now, Dinley said he’s in the final cut for another city manager job in Texas but has also taken some time off to spend clearing his head with his wife and dog.

“We’ll get through it,” he said. “Somebody will hire me or I’ll sit back and say, ‘I’m retired.’”

He said he plans to be involved in Fort Oglethorpe’s elections this fall. Burkhart, Moye and Egeland are all up for reelection.

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