Largo Commission Appears Headed Back to Square One on Manager Pickby Leo Coughlin LARGO - An original plan to interview two top-level city employees and decide between them as to who would be permanent city manager was upended June 26 by Mayor Pat Gerard. Gerard from the beginning was a proponent of launching a "nationwide" search to replace the departed Steve Stanton (who spent last weekend masquerading as a woman in a homosexual parade in St. Petersburg). Other members of the City Commission, led by the thinking of Harriet Crozier, favored appointing either Mac Craig, now serving as acting city manager, or Assistant City Manager Henry Schubert to the vacant post. Consequently a two-hour meeting was scheduled for the purpose of interviewing each of the men in which they would list their aspirations and goals for the city and outline why they wanted the job. The commission presumably would have then and there chosen between the two. But at the end of last week's commission work session Gerard said that she had been contacted by a "reliable" source who said that conversations were held with other commission members and that the "nationwide search" idea was favored. Some observers wondered why a "nationwide" search would be necessary to fill a rather modest job in a droopy-drawers city like little ole Largo, but then the attraction of such a salubrious climate could not be ruled out as a factor. In any event, Gerard, in her inarticulate way, managed to persuade four of her commission colleagues to go back to square one, abandoning the idea of a resolution between Craig and Schubert and re-considering her original idea of a wide search. No decision as to exactly what to do was made on June 26 mainly because Gerard managed to convey, in her tongue tied way, that two commissioners, Gay Gentry and Andy Guyette, were absent and that they should be allowed their input. All of this resulted in some confusion among that part of the city's population that continues to follow city affairs closely with wide-eyed wonder. Was this week's meeting on Tuesday, on the eve of the Glorious Fourth, with the mighty Clearwater Gazette already gone to press going to be decision day for Mac Craig and Henry Schubert or would they be forced to continue to swing in the wind awaiting the cerebrations of what are, obviously at times, confused commissioners? When City Clerk Diane Bruner issued the agenda for this week's commission doings, a special work session to begin at 5 p.m. for the purpose of discussing the method of selecting a permanent city manager was listed. That was to take place before the regular meeting and apparently Guyette and Gentry, the missing pair, found out about the changes when they received on Friday this information along with the mysteries unfolded in the new and radical budget all of the poohbahs on the commission soon will be wrestling with. Gerard's maneuver, obviously a last-gap effort to enforce her idea of the "nationwide" search (and concomitantly a rejection of the worthiness of Craig and Schubert), was preceded by Commissioner Rodney Woods who, in his winsome and winning way, made a plea for hurricane preparedness. This is the thing to do in these parts although ancient old timers, upon dredging their memories, came up with stories told by their daddies of big winds hitting these shores going on something like 100 years ago. Woods, it will be remembered, was an angel of mercy for some Louisiana folks who were discombobulated when Katrina knocked most of the sin out of New Orleans a few years back.
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