Manatee moves closer to permanently hiring Hopes. Will he leave the School Board?
After about a month on the job, Acting County Administrator Scott Hopes could be on his way to filling the position permanently.
Commissioner James Satcher brought the topic up for discussion with the Manatee Board of County Commissioners as part of Tuesday’s public meeting. He said Hopes has passed the county’s test with flying colors in fewer than 45 days, especially in managing the Piney Point crisis in April.
“Dr. Hopes was not the person I championed, but since that time, he was thrown directly in the fire with Piney Point,” Satcher said. “If he were in the military, he would’ve qualified for a battlefield promotion at that point.”
Other commissioners also praised Hopes’ leadership, pointing again to the Piney Point environmental disaster that spun out of control just hours after Hopes signed his employment contract with the county.
“He’s been a breath of fresh air. When he came on board, less than two hours later, we were having to deal with Piney Point,” Commissioner Vanessa Baugh said. “He did a fantastic job. There’s not an administrator — I don’t care where you are in this country — that could have done a better job.”
The board voted 4-3 to approve a motion authorizing Baugh, who serves as chairman of the board, to begin negotiating a permanent contract with Hopes. Commissioners Kevin Van Ostenbridge, Carol Whitmore, Satcher and Baugh voted in favor, while Commissioners Reggie Bellamy, Misty Servia and George Kruse cast dissenting votes.
The board will make a decision on hiring Hopes permanently at a public meeting on May 25.
Most board members said they believed Hopes had proven himself over the past six weeks, but others urged their colleagues to pump the brakes. Hopes signed a 12-month contract, they said, and there’s no reason to rush the decision.
Kruse and Bellamy also reminded the board that members made public statements about conducting a national or statewide search.
“You all need to make sure you realize that we told the public we would do a public search and this is going to be interim. I didn’t agree with the process and spoke out on it,” Bellamy said. “We need to caution ourselves when we tell the public we’re going to do something and then we go a different direction.”
“We promised something and we have to honor the things that we promise,” Kruse added. “I don’t know what the rush job is at this stage. It doesn’t make sense to go back on our word six weeks into something just to remove one word from someone’s title.”
Most commissioners said they weren’t in favor of carrying out an additional search, calling that process a waste of time and money.
“Sometimes you know when the right person comes along and you’ve got the right person in the position,” Baugh said.
“Let’s attribute it to dating,” Van Ostenbridge added. “In the first couple of weeks, you know whether it’s going to work or not.”
After approving a separation agreement with former county administrator Cheri Coryea in February, commissioners moved quickly to hire Hopes in an unusual process.
Before publicly advertising the position, commissioners considered just a handful of names before opening up a job search and collecting about 30 applications for the job. Hopes rose to the top of the list, despite his simultaneous role on the School Board, which many feared would affect his job performance.
“I know he would like to do both, but he can’t. That would put both the school district and the county in a poor position,” Servia said at the time. “He won’t do either of them well if his time is split like that. I’m pretty emphatic that he’s got to come to us with his full attention.”
The county administrator is tasked with day-to-day oversight of Manatee’s 1,900-employee workforce. Members of the elected School Board meet monthly to approve contracts and enact policies that affect more than 49,000 students and 6,000 district employees.
The weight of both jobs can be grueling. After nearly four hours at the April 27 School Board meeting, for instance, immediately after the board finished voting on all its agenda items, Hopes left the meeting chambers. While the official business was done, Hopes missed the final 40 minutes of the meeting, including public comment from nearly half a dozen people.
“I have to apologize but I’m going to have a hard time running this county tomorrow if I don’t leave,” he said at the time.
Three days later, during the School Board’s April 30 workshop, Hopes left the meeting chambers after about two hours, just before the board held a highly anticipated discussion about mask policies in local schools. Hopes later said he joined the meeting virtually after leaving the chambers.
And at Tuesday’s meeting, his seat was empty for the first hour of public comment from people opposed to the School Board’s mask mandate. Hopes, who also has a master of public health degree in epidemiology, arrived in person just before 8 p.m.
Speaking later that evening, Hopes said he immediately left the County Commission meeting and decided to join the School Board meeting virtually at the start, avoiding large crowds of yelling people. That was unclear to residents who could neither see nor hear the District 4 School Board member.
Sherri Webber, one of the first people to speak during public comment on Tuesday evening, pointed to Hopes’ empty seat and called for his resignation.
“Obviously, he’s not here. He has repeatedly missed public comment pertaining specifically to 8450 Policy,” she said, referencing the board’s mask mandate.
Speaking with the Bradenton Herald on Wednesday afternoon, Hopes acknowledged that both responsibilities have been tough to balance, but he defended his job performance.
“If you were to compare my performance in either job to let’s just say your average person, I think I’ve been performing well. Is it exhausting me? Absolutely,” Hopes said. “Piney Point still hasn’t gone away. We still have to keep up with what’s going on there. We are in the middle of a pandemic. We’re in the budget process for both the county and for the school district.
“I did not underestimate the challenges, but also when I took the job I didn’t think I’d have to declare a state of emergency, open the EOC and basically be on call 24 hours a day and make trips to Tallahassee to secure funding,” he continued.
In a recent speaking engagement with the Manatee Tea Party, Hopes said he didn’t plan on resigning from the School Board unless he had an assurance that the county wanted to hire him long-term.
“I would prefer not to give up my School Board seat if I’m not going to be the county administrator,” Hopes told the group. “I will not — if I have a choice — I will not leave a vacancy in that seat.”
As part of the agreement to hire Hopes as the permanent county administrator, board members may require him to resign from the School Board within 30 days.
“The elephant in the room is that he works for the School Board and that is less than ideal,” Satcher said.
If Hopes resigns from the School Board, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will need to appoint someone to fill the vacancy. As of Wednesday afternoon, after more than a month of emails requesting information from the governor’s office, a spokeswoman told the Bradenton Herald they had yet to review candidates.
“The governor does not have appointment authority until there is a vacancy,” Taryn Fenske, the governor’s communications director, said in an email on Wednesday.
“If Mr. Hopes is named the permanent county administrator, a vacancy will be created on the School Board, and the governor will then review applicants and take action to fill said vacancy,” she said. “There are currently no official applicants to Mr. Hopes’ School Board seat, as there is no current vacancy.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 3:24 PM.
