If You Think Palm Coast’s City Manager Search Is a Shrill Show, You Should See Sarasota’s

The Palm Coast City Council holds interviews with prospective city managers on April 24, at least the last two still standing at last check. The city’s process, facilitated by Strategic Government Resources, a recruiting company, drew just 38 applicants, had to be reopened in attempt to draw more, ended up with five short-listed candidates, three of whom swiftly bailed in the face of an unsettled council and a mercurial mayor seemingly at war with the city. Palm Coast appears not to be an exception.

What started as a routine city manager search unraveled into a public spectacle recently at Sarasota’s City Commission. The breakdown on April 11 played out over two separate meetings—a morning workshop and an afternoon special session—where commissioners openly admitted to confusion, mistrust, and having no clear path forward.

Commissioners contradicted each other, the search firm hired to oversee the process struggled to provide basic materials and information, and the public was left in the dark—literally and figuratively—about how the process would move forward.




At the center of the disarray: 47 applicants for the city manager position and no coherent process for narrowing the list.

“I feel like we’re floundering here,” said Mayor Liz Alpert. Elected officials seemed paralyzed by indecision and embarrassed by the process unraveling in real time. “It’s a terrible look,” she said.

The saga began in October 2024 when Marlon Brown retired after more than three decades in government service throughout Florida, including 15 years with the City of Sarasota, the last four as city manager.

At the outset, the city hired national search firm Colin Baenziger & Associates of Daytona Beach to lead the city manager recruitment [the firm has recruited for Flagler Beach previously]. But by last Friday’s meeting, it was clear several commissioners were unsure who had controlled the process all along.

Commissioners pointed to one-on-one meetings with staff and the search firm where commissioners had privately shared ideas about what they wanted in a city manager. But that behind-the-scenes approach ultimately spilled into public view, exposing the fractures in a process that lacked structure from the start.

There was no clear agreement on evaluation criteria, no collective discussion of priorities, and no plan for incorporating public input or community participation. Commissioners openly admitted they had never clearly defined what they were looking for in a candidate—a vacuum that helped fuel the disarray.




More troubling was that commissioners submitted their preferred candidates from the pool of 47 via a spreadsheet—outside of a public meeting. A 2023 opinion from the Florida Attorney General made clear the Sunshine Law prohibits ranking candidates in an executive search outside of a publicly noticed meeting.

Christine Robinson, speaking on behalf of the Argus Foundation, put it plainly: “The public doesn’t have access to the materials you’re talking about today.”

Robinson wasn’t alone in raising concerns. Commissioner Kyle Battie echoed the concern: “We almost seem as though we don’t have a clue as to what we’re doing. That doesn’t bode well for the public and their confidence in us.”

Battie likened the events to “trying to change a tire on a bike while we’re riding it.”

Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch declared bluntly, “We did not direct any of this. This is coming at us.”

Vice Mayor Debbie Trice tried to salvage the process by proposing a hybrid approach: preserve the current applicant pool but publish all materials to give the public a window into future deliberations. But even that compromise couldn’t paper over the commission’s lack of a coherent plan.

A suggestion that candidates submit five-minute introductory videos—aimed at humanizing resumes—was dismissed by some as potentially discriminatory, despite the fact that public interviews would eventually reveal the same information.




By the afternoon meeting, the dysfunction reached a climax. Ahearn-Koch introduced a motion to scrap the entire process and start anew— publicly, transparently, and on the Commission’s own terms.

The motion failed 4–1, but not before exposing deep fractures. Commissioners admitted they didn’t know which materials were public, why some candidates were recommended over others, or how five additional names landed on their list without a formal vote or directive. Basic documents such as resumes and background packets were not included in the meeting agenda and only presented after complaints from the public.

Several commissioners worried starting over would waste months and cost Sarasota its most promising candidates. Others argued the entire process was tainted by disorganization, and pushing forward would only deepen public mistrust.

“If I were a potential candidate, I would think twice about applying,” said Vice Mayor Trice. She questioned why a candidate would “move to this crazy city where the commission can’t make a decision.”​

“It was chaos,” said Martin Hyde, a frequent critic of city government. “There’s no consistency in the processes. The only thing that is predictable is that they take hours at every meeting to demonstrate their incompetence.”

What Comes Next?

City Attorney Joe Polzak recommended the city “reboot” the search process.  But in the end, the commission did not agree on a clear timeline or leadership direction. Commissioners agreed to hold a follow-up meeting where they’ll begin—again—by publicly naming their top candidates and requesting additional background materials from the search firm.

But with some commissioners already second-guessing their picks and others visibly frustrated with the entire process, it’s unclear whether the future meeting will resolve anything or simply repeat last Friday’s display in a slightly more polished form.

“Likely, I would come up with the same list I have,” said Alpert.




The number of potential candidates is likely to be less after last Friday’s week’s debacle. One candidate withdrew from consideration after watching the spectacle. “I can’t imagine anyone who would want to work in that environment,” the former candidate told the Florida Trident.

As of Thursday, April 17, city hall could not provide consistent information on the number of candidates who had dropped out. One official told the Trident in an email that none had withdrawn. Another official confirmed that four had dropped out.

Jan Thornburgh, the City’s Communication Manager, has subsequently stated that two additional candidates had withdrawn: Kathy Blonski and Mike Graese. Blonski was one of two candidates preferred by all 5 commissioners.

–Michael Barfield, Florida Trident