Former Coast Guard commander Lindsey named new Marathon city manager

Former Coast Guard commander Lindsey

named new Marathon city manager

BY TERRY SCHMIDA

In the end, it came down to a choice between a man with experience running a local Coast Guard base and one with expertise in managing mainland cities and counties.

Ultimately, Marathon City Council on Tuesday capped its exhaustive search for a new city manager by offering the job to the known quantity. That move will return Coast Guard Station Marathon’s former Operations Manager Charles Lindsey – and his family – to the community at the heart of the Keys.

In grasping the brass ring, Lindsey beat out Lyndon Bonner, who has served as the city manager of Bunnell, in Flagler County, as the assistant county administrator in Sumter County, Fla., county administrator of Okeechobee County, and lastly, as the city manager of North Miami Beach, during 2011 and 2012.

Lindsey’s hire mirrors somewhat the actions of Marathon’s municipal neighbor to the south, Key West, where former NAS Key West CO Jim Scholl has served as city manager, off and on, for years.

“I’m an optimist,” Lindsey said Tuesday, during his final, public, interview, before City Council. “I don’t think we have major issues.”

However, Lindsey did state that browsing local real estate, in anticipation of a possible move back to the Keys, had alerted him to a big problem on the horizon: affordable housing.

The market has risen dramatically in the two years since he left, which is good news for Marathon, but “not such a good thing for the Lindsey family,” he said. “Everything’s going to fail eventually” if nothing is done to solve the housing crisis facing local workers.

Lindsey’s comments come as the city prepares for a groundbreaking ceremony at 9 a.m. Aug. 28 at the site of a soon-to-be built affordable housing complex at 624 73^rd Street, Oceanside.

The search for a new city manager has been a long and winding road for the council, since acting manager Mike Puto informed the body back in April that he would be vacating his position before the new year – or sooner, if they could find a replacement before that time.

More than 50 applications were initially received for the job. City Council members whittled that number down to five, in late July, conducting Skype interviews with the short listed candidates. By July 28, just Lindsey and Bonner were still in contention for the gig.

Bonner made national headlines in 2011 when two North Miami Beach Police Department employees were fired for plotting to put a Santeria curse on him, to make him “go away,” according to the Huffington Post.

During Tuesday’s public interview process, Lindsey responded to Councilman Bill Kelly’s query about his motives for wanting the job by saying “the military brought me here, and then the military took me from here.” As Lindsey and his wife, who taught at Marathon Middle High School during her husband’s deployment, were driving out of the Keys, he said, the couple “knew [they] were leaving too soon.”

Asked by Vice-Mayor Mark Senmartin where he’d like to see himself in five years, Lindsey replied that he hoped he’d be watching his son “at Stanley Switlik, playing popcorn football.”

Mayor Chris Bull conceded that Lindsey was a “not typical” candidate for the job, but the latter replied that he has a “good understanding of chain of command and how it’s supposed to work” and that he could “apply it to city government.”

Following the City Council vote, the announcement of their intention to hire Lindsey’s received sustained applause from those present at the Marathon Government Center. Lindsey then shook hands with council members, who addressed him as “Mr. City Manager.”

Mayor Bull then directed newly hired City Attorney David Migut to commence contract negotiations with Lindsey, who should be on the job by the end of September. Retiring City Manager Puto was then thanked for his service, to more applause.

“It’s been fun,” Puto said.