There’s no need for search

You can say this about the five Sarasota city commissioners: To their credit, they are as earnest and dedicated as can be and want to do what is right and best for the city’s residents and taxpayers.

But God love them, sometimes when you watch their meetings, that old joke comes to mind: They couldn’t organize a one-car parade.

Ouch. Too harsh? Yes. But that’s not intended to be mean. It’s just that, unfortunately, they have been on a roll lately — with their wandering and discombobulated discussions about the Sarasota Performing Arts Center and how to hire a new city manager.

And yet, thank goodness, they have some self-awareness. 

At Monday’s City Commission discussion on figuring out a process for hiring a city manager, the commissioners had the humility to recognize their April 11 meeting on the subject was a disaster.

Commissioner Kyle Battie said: “It was one of the first times since I’ve been on this commission that I walked out of here totally and completely, not only confused, but disgruntled. It left me with almost no confidence in the process.

“This process seriously needs to be dismissed, dismantled and totally obliterated,” Battie said.

Mayor Liz Alpert: “I left the April 11th meeting shocked at the dysfunction here in this room … I don’t disagree that the last meeting was horrendous. I don’t even drink, but I went home and I had this much wine. It was horrendous.”

So Monday morning, after a painstaking, hour-long discussion on whether to start the search process from scratch or to embrace and continue the detailed four-step process that city HR Manager Stacie Mason presented, commissioners decided to go back to start. The vote was 3-2, with Mayor Alpert and Vice Mayor Debbie Trice opting not to restart.

Actually, there are two extraordinarily simple solutions that can eliminate all of the angst, cost and hours upon hours that will be devoted over the next several months to a search and selection process that, ultimately and inevitably, will lead to a city manager who either will be a dud or fired after a short time.

To that point, this should tell you something and perhaps alarm you: At one point in Monday’s discussion about the 44 candidates who have submitted applications for the job, Vice Mayor Trice noted that many of the applicants currently were unemployed. 

Oh, great. So this would be like picking your team on the school playground. After the top players are quickly selected, to fill out your roster, you’re left with the losers.

One of the citizen speakers at Monday’s meeting, Sarasota resident John Mercer, also made these cogent points:

“One of the real challenges today in trying to find a good city manager … is that the best city managers are usually well-regarded in the communities they’re already in. And they’re usually in pretty stable situations, and any kind of move is risky. 

“And so the best ones,” he said, “usually won’t want to move or certainly don’t want to throw their hat into the ring and then have it appear on a list in a newspaper someplace and then their own community finds out about it.”

At the same time, Mercer urged the commissioners not to “settle” for second best. “If you settle for somebody, you’re not confident in them, then you put them in a situation where they may be asked to leave in a couple of years. And at that point, you get a reputation as being a flaky commission, that it’s a risky place to go to.”

We all know how this goes when someone who has never lived here is hired. It’s always rocky the first year — at a minimum. Disruption reigns.

The new boss in town typically fires the existing managers and supervisors and wants to bring in his or her own team. Some or many long-time loyal employees also learn they don’t fit with the new manager’s style; they quit. More new people who don’t know anything are hired and create more confusion and disruption.

City commissioners also must learn to adjust, as does the new city manager to them.

All that’s occurs inside the confines of City Hall. 

Meantime, the new city manager is tasked with learning how the city works; maintaining relationships with other county and city officials; and learning to understand the nuances of the city’s neighborhoods and residents.

None of this is rocket science. But you never know. Hiring is always a gamble. As the saying goes, you never know until you put the player in the game.

Here’s another one: Often times it takes three tries to find the right one.

Imagine the cost: Lost time and money — at a time when the city is facing multiple crucial issues. 

How can the commission and residents avoid all that?

The first answer is a good one, but impractical at the moment. It also has been suggested unsuccessfully three times in the past two decades: Convert the city governance to an elected CEO mayor, aka strong mayor.

That is what is really needed in the city of Sarasota. A leader who can win an election because of his or her vision for the city and who has the competence to execute.

As noted above: Impractical at this moment. 

Which brings us to Martin Hyde, the ever-present Sarasota resident who serves at every City Commission meeting as a rational, amusing and insightful taxpayer watchdog.

Don’t roll your eyes. Hyde almost always makes good, common sense. And in this case, he did it again.

On the subject of hiring a city manager Monday, Hyde told commissioners:  

“So what I wanted to talk about was the proverbial elephant in the room, and Mr. (Pat) Robinson (deputy city manager) will have to excuse me because I speak out of turn. 

“I haven’t discussed any of this with him, but we do have an established deputy, to the best of my knowledge, whose hands have never been tainted by any scandal, YouTube videos or whatever else. 

“As I understood it, again, anecdotally, his hands are tied by pension challenges in part. 

“It’s logical to use the old phrase, ‘the devil you know,’ not asserting that Mr. Robinson is any kind of devil or demon. 

“And frankly, any candidate by definition will take time to establish themselves. So why not try to find a way to make Pat city manager instead of this uncertainty, this injustice, keeping somebody from their retirement and think about a way that we can work through this pension thing? … As it stands at the moment, you’re blowing in the wind. Just an idea,” he said.

It’s a good idea, and it’s the right idea.

File photo

Pat Robinson, 47, is practically a native Sarasotan, having lived here 45 years. He’s about as local as you can get — graduating from Phillippi Shores Elementary, Brookside Middle and Riverview High. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from  the College of Holy Cross and a master’s in public safety leadership from St. Cloud State University. 

When he came back to Sarasota, he graduated from the Sarasota Criminal Justice Academy in 2001 and served the next 21 years in the Sarasota Police Department. He rose from an officer on the street to detective to sergeant, captain and deputy chief of police. Along the way, he also graduated from the FBI National Academy at Quantico, the Southern Police Institute and the Senior Management Institute for Police in Boston.  

And when former City Manager Marlon Brown tapped Robinson in 2021 to be his deputy city manager, Brown assigned Robinson to oversee the police department. He still carries his badge and gun as an official police officer.

As deputy city manager, Robinson also oversees the city’s utilities and public works; homeless outreach; information and technology; parks and recreation; short- and long-term financial and strategic goals and as a liaison with the Coalition of City Neighborhood Association. 

Also as head of the city’s emergency management, Robinson spearheaded the city’s cleanup after Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton.

There is probably no one in the city of Sarasota who knows more about the city than Robinson. If you drive Sarasota’s neighborhoods, he points out places and people where he made arrests 20 years ago. He knows the city’s history and where all the criminals’ and politicians’ skeletons are buried. His knowledge of the city is invaluable on every level. No outsider will ever have the experience, roots and love for the city that Robinson does.

And to be sure, he has the respect of his fellow police officers, as well as law enforcement officers and city and county officials throughout Sarasota and Manatee counties. He has proven himself a competent leader with integrity. And importantly, writing from our first-hand knowledge, he has little tolerance for inefficient bureaucrats and bureaucracy and wasteful spending.

After Brown retired, Robinson took himself out of the running for the city manager position to protect his police pension. If he had accepted the interim city manager job, the town charter would have required him to forfeit more than two years of pension earnings before reaching his 25-year service mark.

Hyde is right. Figure out a way to solve the pension problem. The best man for the job is sitting at City Hall and at each meeting in the City Commission chambers. 

With Robinson, the city could move forward on all of the crucial issues that are piling up. No adjustments needed.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Mr. Robinson is married to my daughter, Emily Walsh, president of the Observer Media Group. 

So you might conclude I’m biased. Probably. But also look at it this way: 1) He has passed the family test — a member in good standing. 2) Compared to other city managers I’ve seen over 50 years, I would hire him in a heartbeat. 3) I don’t want to risk my reputation, so I would not recommend a loser or someone unfit for the job.

Cut property taxes? Dream on 

You have to admit: When you first heard Gov. Ron DeSantis say Florida’s local property taxes should be eliminated, your initial reaction probably was “Heck yeah!”

But in your next thought, you also wondered: Replace it with what?

We all know any time a politician talks about taking away, reducing or eliminating government revenue, typically, there is a catch: It needs to be made up somewhere else.

Especially Florida’s property taxes. They are the primary funding source for the services county and municipal governments provide.

If the Legislature tried to eliminate property taxes without giving local governments another source at least equal to what property taxes generate, you could expect a major, ugly war in Tallahassee — the governor and state lawmakers versus county and city commissioners; police, firefighter and EMT unions; and local government employees.

Well aware of the craziness of the governor’s idea, Florida Speaker Daniel Perez instead offered a counter proposal: To cut the state’s sales tax rate from 6% to 5.25%. Perez said that would make Florida more affordable for everyone and would be better than DeSantis’ other tax-cut gimmick — sales-tax holidays for an assortment of special categories.

Going into the Legislature’s special session next week, it looks like lawmakers won’t do either DeSantis’ or Perez’s proposals.

Instead, while mocking the governor (“Unfortunately, as the weeks have gone by, the governor has not yet come forward with … a specific plan … ), Perez has created a special House committee to study how to reform Florida’s property tax system. He wants a specific proposal to put on the November 2026 state ballot.

Count on this: Lawmakers won’t really propose to cut taxes. They will do what they always do: Shift the burden and pick winners and losers.