‘Gauntlet has been thrown down’: County’s second-in-command begins Florida interview

While Beaufort County deputy administrator Josh Gruber prepares for a final interview in Marco Island Fla., the process that has brought him to the cusp of becoming the new city manager there is being called into question.

For more than an hour Monday evening, Marco Island City Council members — the people in charge of the city manager hiring process — debated the merits of interviewing Gruber and holding a vote Wednesday on whether to offer him the position.

Concerns centered around the fact that after the recent withdrawal of another finalist — Marple Township, Pa., manager Anthony Hamaday — Gruber is the only qualified applicant remaining.

This has left the City Council with the choice of hiring Beaufort County’s second-in-command or restarting the search process.

“I don’t think any of us imagined … that we would wind up with one candidate,” council member Joe Batte said Monday.

Batte called the hiring process “troublesome” and “very, very unfortunate.”

He said that, while he looks forward to meeting with Gruber at a special council meeting Wednesday night, “this process has robbed me of my opportunity to be able to prove to constituents that I have done everything I can to give them the very best candidate.”

Council member Charlette Roman echoed Batte’s concerns.

The city manager hiring process is flawed because Marco Island leaders failed to “anticipate … having a one-candidate selection situation,” she said.

“The citizens have asked us to slow down in this process and do it right this time,” Roman said.

Batte said he believes the Mercer Group, the executive search firm brought to identify and vet candidates, “can find a few more qualified people that we can do additional interviews with.”

Not all Marco Island officials agreed with calls to put the brakes on the hiring process.

“We started off with 80-plus applications, and the search firm did the job that they were hired to do,” council vice-chairman Jared Grifoni said. “... It’s unfortunate that Mr. Hammaday withdrew, but that is out of our control.”

“It’s impossible to have a perfect process,” he said, but the most important thing is that the process results in hiring the best candidate for the job.

“We would be doing the citizens of Marco Island a grave disservice if we didn’t give (Gruber) a shot at proving that he is the best candidate,” Grifoni said. “... The gauntlet has been thrown down.”

Council member Victor Rios agreed, saying that if the council believes Gruber can be a successful city manager, he should be hired regardless of the number of candidates available.

“We will just have to see how it plays out,” said Gruber earlier this week. Gruber has long been considered a potential a replacement for Beaufort County administrator Gary Kubic when he retires at the end of the year.

Marco Island has a recent history of controversy regarding its city manager.

A second finalist dropped out just prior to a 2014 vote on whether to hire previous city manager Roger Hernstadt.

Roman said the current situation is council’s fault for failing to include “a safety net” in case the hiring process left only a single candidate “because something similar happened last time we hired a city manager.”

Not only was Hernstadt’s arrival as Marco Island’s city manager controversial, so was his departure.

Hernstadt resigned earlier this year and took an $89,000 severance package with him, according to a March report by the Naples Daily News.

Coincidentally, Hernstadt was hired in April to serve as town manager in Fort Myers Beach, Fla. Gruber was the runner-up for that job.

This story was originally published July 18, 2017 at 3:33 PM with the headline "‘Gauntlet has been thrown down’: County’s second-in-command begins Florida interview."