Our View: Start with a blank sheet

“I will work tirelessly for your goals … I will work very hard to make this the best town in the nation.”
— David Bullock, new Longboat Key interim town manager

It is what it is.

There is no point ranting or scolding for the selection Monday night of David Bullock as Longboat Key’s new interim town manager.

The six commissioners who voted to hire Bullock (Lynn Larson voted “no”) believe they did the best and right thing for the town and its citizens.

They know the process wasn’t perfect. And they know there are many Longboaters who didn’t like the process or the outcome. Indeed, Longboat Key resident David Novak provided a cogent assessment of the matter when he addressed the town commissioners at Monday night’s commission meeting:

The process: “It seemed [the process] could have been more open,” Novak said.

The cost: As a business operator himself — he serves as an interim chief operating officer for medical practices — he would look at Bullock’s hiring as paying for two town managers at once. There’s the cost of Bruce St. Denis’ severance (roughly $250,000) and now Bullock’s salary (about $180,000). The way I see that is my cost next year is $430,000,” not $180,000, Novak said.

The “interim” status: “It looks like a lot of concrete is being poured into this contract to make it a permanent contract,” Novak said.

And finally, as he closed, Novak pointed out what many people have voiced about Bullock’s selection with a cogent, declarative opinion: “We need change, and we need someone who has turned around a town. In Mr. Bullock, it looks as though we’ve moved one out and moved one in, and we’re $450,000 out.”
As Rush Limbaugh would say, for those in Rio Lindo, that means it looks as though the town traded one bureaucrat for another — at twice the price.

Everyone hopes that is not the case.

And at this point, it’s safe to say Longboat Key taxpayers truly are hoping for the best. The commissioners did what they did on the basis of the information they had gathered and were given and under the circumstances that existed.

It wasn’t a perfect process. But accept it. The commissioners are elected to use their best judgment; give them the benefit of any doubts. And give Bullock a chance.

The real burden, of course, now shifts to Bullock. And surely he knows it.

He knows his hiring was not altogether conventional and came with palpable skepticism. Indeed, it was probably good for Bullock to sit through Monday’s Town Commission meeting to hear the concerns and doubts of town taxpayers.

Bullock gets it. He has, after all, been serving in a quasi-political position for the past 14 years as deputy administrator in Sarasota County. So he knows if he succeeds, the six commissioners will look like geniuses and cruise to re-election. If he doesn’t, out they’ll go. Few Longboaters would want to be in his position. Pressure will be high.

The expectations are already high, especially after the endorsements Monday night from Vice Mayor David Brenner and Commissioner Hal Lenobel.

Brenner said he received many unsolicited calls from Sarasotans who said, “If you don’t grab this guy, you’re crazy.”

Lenobel: “I met Mr. Bullock 14 years ago. He is the most industrious, capable employee we could have possibly chosen. I support him 100%.”

From here, the agenda seems pretty obvious. Bullock has the job of any new CEO who takes on a turnaround. Simultaneously, he must figure out how to address the most pressing issues challenging the town and win the trust and confidence of his employees, the customers (taxpayers) and his board of directors (the Town Commission).

At the same time, the Town Commission has the challenge of determining how best to move forward with an interim manager and what the town’s management needs should be for the next decade. Commissioners will know a lot in 90 days and much more in 120.

If Bullock is all that his supporters say he is, one of the best scenarios could be this: He could become the permanent manager and do what should have been done before — hire a younger successor who can be groomed to take the Key from 2020 and beyond.

David Bullock set the bar high when he told commissioners Monday night he would work hard to make “this the best town in the nation.”

For everyone’s sake, it makes sense to support his efforts.

+ Jim Brown: Longboat icon
It cannot be so.

Longboat Key and Jim Brown (the elder) go together like Longboat Key and paradise.

But word spread like a Florida brush fire last week that former four-term Longboat Key Mayor Jim Brown (no relation to the current Mayor Jim Brown) will be leaving Longboat Key for the West Coast at the end of this week because of illness.

Hold the presses. (He would like that, being the lifelong newspaperman that he is.)

Few people would argue that in the 35 years he has lived on the Key Jim Brown has become a Longboat Key institution and icon. Through his involvement in the town as a mayor, commissioner and chair of a half-dozen or more committees; involvement in so many Longboat Key organizations (Kiwanis, St. Jude Gourmet Luncheon, Key Club Mens’ Club); involvement in his beloved St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church (head of the men’s club, chair of the lectors and chair, with his late wife, Marge, of the annual Jesse Tree drive at Christmas); and through his weekly columns in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Brown has had an influence and voice on Longboat Key like no other in its history.

We often did not agree with Brown on many issues (especially on town budgets and taxes), but that never stood in the way of our having a friendship and great admiration and respect for Brown. You cannot not like Jim Brown.

When Brown called to ask a favor — to serve, say, on the St. Jude luncheon committee or to speak to one of his adult education classes at the University of South Florida, you could not say no.

One of the ways we will remember Brown is as what we would call “a real newspaperman and journalist,” the genuine article. Ink is indeed in his blood. We’ll always remember that when Brown sent out the annual schedule for St. Mary lectors, it arrived in the mail typewritten on what looked to be the keystrokes of an old, classic Royal typewriter. This was so even in the era of emails. True blue to the craft.

Brown was the kind of newspaperman who lived up to the higher calling of what a newspaperman and journalist should be — honest, truthful, factual, accurate, a man of integrity and one who believed that a newspaper was a medium for good, there to help build a community.

Jim Brown in his professional career and as a columnist for the past 15 years did what all newspaper people aspire to achieve: He made a difference. He made a big, positive difference on Longboat Key.

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— MW

TOWN ATTORNEY SPEAKS ON NEW MANAGER SELECTION

Here are three excerpts from Longboat Key Town Attorney David Persson’s explanation Monday at the Town Commission meeting of how the commission reached the point of voting to hire former Sarasota County Deputy Administrator David Bullock as Longboat Key’s interim town manager:

“I thought [my charge] was to find someone who had that expertise, was from the outside and an activist manager, someone who had hands-on experience.”

“The negative on Mr. Bullock was he would kill sacred cows. And that, frankly, got me excited.”

“I offer you him not without risk. There are always risks that pop up. Be careful what you ask for. You may get it. With Mr. Bullock, you’ll get it.”